


Far From Home (Teaser)

by WritingsOfStardust



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 1x02, Family, Friendship, Gen, Preview, The Blind Banker, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 12:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18778312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingsOfStardust/pseuds/WritingsOfStardust
Summary: Emili Holmes teams up with her brother, Sherlock, and his flatmate, John, to solve a break-in at an investment banking firm. When their lead is found murdered, their case becomes an investigation into the high-stakes world of international smuggling.This is a preview of a long WIP.





	Far From Home (Teaser)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a compilation of scenes from my WIP Sherlock story, "Far From Home". These scenes are all from the "Blind Banker" plot, and are edited for length and clarity (given the lack of surrounding context from other scenes and previous plot points). If you've seen the "Blind Banker" plot, this is easy to follow.
> 
> Here is the necessary exposition, which is left out here because it is already included in earlier sections of the story: Emili, a sixteen-year-old American, has been taken in through an overseas adoption by the Holmes parents following the loss of her own family. She lives in the apartment above 221B under Mycroft's supervision, in exchange for telling their parents that Mycroft is an attentive and responsible older brother to her.

            Emili was trying and struggling to write a paper on Jane Austen for her Brit-Lit class. She’d been meaning to read _Pride and Prejudice_ for years but had never gotten around to it, so she chose to do her literary review on Austen. That meant she had to read the book first. No big deal. She got a recommendation for a bookstore from John and went and picked up a copy.

            The book was dry compared to Harry Potter, which she still believed to be the pinnacle of British writing. The language was outdated and it didn’t help that even half of the British slang in the modern age was foreign to Emili – she had asked for a bag of chips at the supermarket and was directed to an aisle in frozen goods with French fries. The formality was irritating – people had ever really talked like that? – and it seemed like it was going to take forever to read.

            _“With a renewal of tenderness, however, they repaired to her room on leaving the dining-parlour,”_ Emili mouthed along with the books, having to speak the words herself to manage to stay focused rather than just let her mind wander. _“And sat with her till summoned to coffee. She was still very poorly, and Eliza-“_

Another thud coming from 221B made her muscles jump where she laid on her stomach on her bed, having slept late and decided to wake up by reading, only getting up long enough to brush her hair and teeth and wash her face. Gritting her teeth, Emili resumed reading after ten seconds of nothing from downstairs.

            _“-And Elizabeth would not quit her at all, till late in the evening, when she had the comfort of seeing her asleep, and when it appeared to her rather right than pleasant that she should go down stairs herself. On entering the drawing-room she found the whole party at-“_

            Something slammed hard into a wall downstairs in Sherlock’s apartment. Emili was astonished that John was letting the ruckus continue for so long, and if the blogger wasn’t going to do something about it, then she would. It was getting ridiculous.

            Emili pushed her bookmark in between the open pages and then slammed the novel shut, pushing it to the side of her pillow and hopping off of her bed. A Doctor Who nightdress and long pink hair didn’t make her look very scary, but at least she was taller than John, and that was a fact that Emili was very proud of most of the time – she may not be big enough to scare Sherlock, but she wasn’t the smallest.

            As she went storming downstairs, the noise just continued. Emili didn’t knock on the door before she tried the handle, and it swung right on open when she pushed. The teenager put her hands on her hips and pushed the door shut with a kick, looking around for Sherlock and John irately.

            “Excuse you, sir Neanderthals,” she hissed, knowing that it was a weak insult most of the time but one that this man in particular would take offense to. “ _Some_ of us are actually trying to maintain our GPAs up here, and it’s really hard to do that when – _oh my God!”_

            She cut herself off and covered her mouth with her hands, eyes flying wide with shock. Sherlock came leaping out of the kitchen, hurrying backwards and looking over his shoulder to avoid tripping, while someone else followed, wielding a long sword with a slightly-curved blade. The attacker turned to look at her, pausing his assault on Sherlock. Whoever was giving sword-fighting lessons was decked out like a ninja, wearing a long black robe that covered all of him but his face, and his face was wrapped with scarves. The thinnest scarf was deep red and the only reason it was almost easy to see through was because it was only a strip that went over his eyes, allowing him to see.

            Emili regretted drawing the attention to herself with her shouting before figuring out what the commotion was from. The robed man took his eyes off of Sherlock and changed course, coming towards her. Part of Em thought that it was because he didn’t want witnesses to his intended murder, but another was already looking around for something to combat a sword with. There was a table against the wall with a lamp and a steel candelabra. Emili picked up the candelabra and held it up to the ninja or whatever he was supposed to be.

            When the sword came down at her, she held up the candelabra in front of it and the blade was stopped by the curve between two of the candle rests. Throwing her arm to the side, Emili jerked the candelabra, and the sword, to her left. With the blade not poised to strike, she turned to her left and raised her right leg, delivering a strong kick into the man’s chest. She was thankful for the self-defense videos on the internet – she was surprised she got her leg up that far and wished she hadn’t just flashed a nice shot of her underwear, but the sword flailed out of the candelabra and its bearer went stumbling backwards, bent over with a hand against his sternum.

            The attacker recovered swiftly from the kick and went for the first person he saw upon standing up. Even with two against one, Emili thought that the sword definitely made the fight more than fair. This time, the man held the hilt of the sword in one hand and the flat edge of the blade in the other and went after Sherlock again. While she watched helplessly, the attacker forced Sherlock into the kitchen.

            Emili picked her way over the pieces of a shattered vase on the carpet to get far enough into the living room – er, parlor – to see the adjoined kitchen. Sherlock was forced down onto his back over the table, arms up and working on shoving the sword away from his throat. The man definitely trying to kill him was bent over him between the detective’s legs.

            Emili charged the kitchen and leapt from a couple feet away onto the man’s back. He made no move to catch her, but she wrapped her arms tight around his throat and her legs around his waist. It took some awkward wiggling to secure a position on his back, but then she put her chin on his shoulder and reached after his arms, grabbing at his wrists and pulling the sword away from Sherlock.

            Sherlock pushed harder with one hand than the other and let the end of the blade go down while the other kept going back towards its wielder. The tip of the sword pushed into the table and dug into the wood, and without such an imminent threat so close to his neck, Sherlock started to kick, repeatedly jabbing his knees into the man’s legs. Emili let go of the wrist trying to get the sword out of the gauge in the table and got that arm around the man’s throat, tightening her grip in a stranglehold.

            Finally, with not just his assassination thwarted but his life threatened, the man let Sherlock free and stood away, dropping the sword. Both of his hands went to Emili’s arm, and painfully strong fingers gripped her arm like claws, trying to forcibly loosen her grip. The teen held on and even leaned back, using her weight to her advantage. The intruder stumbled with the added weight and backed into a wall.

            Coughing over the man’s shoulder, her arm loosened from his neck and her thighs relaxed. The man ripped her arm off of his throat and elbowed her violently in her side over her kidney, bending backwards further. Emili lost her grip and crashed down to the floor, leaning on the wall and nursing a sore back and what felt like a broken kidney.

            “Look!” Sherlock shouted, getting the man’s attention back to him. He pointed with his left hand to the mirror over a dressing table that had found a home in 221B’s parlor.

            For just a second, the assassin held himself straighter, seeing the movements of Sherlock and himself. It wasn’t long at all, but it was long enough for the detective to step forward and swing his fist forcefully into the attacker’s jaw. The man reeled before he dropped a few feet away from his forgotten sword, and Emili curiously stared at the body, wondering absently how long he was going to stay unconscious.

            Sherlock fixed his black blazer and his collar, brushing off the imaginary dust on the sleeves. He looked down at the prone body, huffed indignantly at the rudeness of being assaulted, and then looked to Emili, who remained seated by the wall, the confusion catching up with her now that no one’s life was in peril.

            “Friend of yours?” She asked, holding her left hand over her right side where she’d been hit.

            “Assassin, more like, from a Hindi museum jewelry heist.” Sherlock lowered himself into a kneel in front of her and took her chin in hand, turning her head to one side and then peering into her eyes. “Are you injured?”

            “Just winded,” she replied. She was hurting, but there wasn’t much that even John could have done about that. If there was internal bleeding, then she could apologize for accidentally lying after the emergency surgery. “When did you take a new case?”

            Sherlock pursed his lips in vague annoyance. She had about half a second to wonder what she had said to tick him off. “I believe it was when I tried to wake you up and you replied with some profane language about it being too early,” he stiffly responded.

* * *

 

            Sebastian took the trio out of his office, but they didn’t go far. From his desk, he could see several of the desks out of his window. He led Emili, John, and Sherlock to the right of his office door and to another of the larger spaces in front of the trading posts. This door was closed.

            “This is Sir William’s office – the bank’s former Chairman.” Down to business, Sebastian kept sounding clipped and on track. “The room’s been left here like a sort of memorial. Someone broke in last night.”

            “What did they steal?” John asked in concern. It was a bank – there was presumably a lot they could steal, especially information on clients’ accounts.

            “Nothing.” That bothered Emili – if nothing had been stolen, how did they know someone had broken in? They were in the upper half of one of the tallest buildings in London! It wasn’t like just chucking a rock up to the second story. “Just left a little message.”

            A yellow, white, and orange key card with a black magnetic strip was produced from Sebastian’s pocket and the man held the side with the strip down against the card pad to the right of the door. The light turned green after he held it for a few seconds and a mechanism made a soft _snick._ Sebastian tucked the card safely back inside his pocket and twisted the knob down, pushing it to open.

            There was a portrait of an elderly man with grey hair in a grey formal suit, hands politely in front of him, sitting down, and staring towards the painter, which made for the odd, creepy effect of feeling like the portrait was watching them. Emili hoped it had been insured, because over the man’s painted eyes and brow was a long line of yellow paint. It was a lot of paint for one motion and had started to make trails going down. She guessed it was from a spray can.

            To the left of the painting was another graffiti mark. The bright yellow paint had made a horizontal line even with the other but on the white-painted wall, and underneath that one was what looked like a number 8, but with less curves and sharper edges, and the top loop didn’t connect, instead broken off with the top missing.

            Sherlock stared at the painting marks with very rapt concentration even after Emili was done looking at them, so she turned to Sebastian and asked, “Don’t you have security cameras?”

            Sebastian nodded to her. “Back to my office, lads,” he invited.

            Sherlock whipped around, done with the graffiti in the blink of an eye, coat trailing off behind him while he went out the door that had been held open. John cast a lingering frown in the paint’s direction while he followed after Sherlock because he didn’t want to be left out of the loop. Sebastian was obligated by responsibility to stay behind their abrupt departure to lock up the office for security and preservation purposes.

            Emili hovered outside the doorway, but far enough away for him to have the space to lock the door and make sure that the mechanism kept it that way, smiling smugly.

            “So you think Sherlock can solve this, right?” She questioned. She had yet to see someone as sharp as her Sherlock, except for maybe Mycroft, so she wasn’t asking out of drawing her own confidence. She just wanted to rub it in Sebastian’s face exactly how much of a bastard he was being.

            “If anyone can,” he answered, confident himself.

            “So then maybe you should have spent less time bullying and more time listening to him?” She asked smartly. The unspoken _maybe you would have learned from him_ made Sebastian’s assured smirk fall from his face as he looked back at her, grinding his teeth. Emili grinned and held out her hand to shake. “Sherlock left out my last name,” she continued with a half-smirk pulling up her lips. “I’m Emili _Holmes._ His sister.”

* * *

 

            “Every door that opens in this bank, it gets logged, right here. Every walk-in cupboard, every toilet…” Sebastian showed them the log he was talking about on the monitor.

            “And there was no activity in the office last night?” She asked despite not looking at the computer.

            “Precisely,” Sebastian confirmed, not looking at her. That was okay; Emili wasn’t looking at him, either. He wasn’t exactly the _Magic Mike_ cast, so really, the architecture was a much better sight. “There’s a hole in our security. Find it, and we’ll pay you… five figures.” Sebastian clicked the tab on the monitor and stood up, clearing his throat. When Emili looked back to him, wondering if he’d been trying to get her attention, Sebastian produced a pre-written check from the interior of his blazer. “This is an advance,” he told Sherlock, holding the order towards him. “Tell me how he got in, and there’s a bigger one on its way.”

            Sherlock didn’t even look at the check to see how much it was. Em supposed he didn’t really _need_ the money – his family may force him to generate his own income but she very highly doubted that they would tolerate him not being able to pay the rent – and she knew that trivialities weren’t really his thing.

            He lifted his head higher. “I don’t _need_ an incentive, _Sebastian_.” Sherlock declared, speaking down to his former classmate as if he had been grievously offended by the offer of payment for services rendered. Coat whipping, he stalked away from the reception without taking the check, going on the route they’d taken out of the trading floor to get back into the bank.

            “He’s, uh, he’s kidding you. Obviously.” John started to reach for the check. Sebastian looked down at him cynically. “Shall I look after that for him?” While John looked up at Sebastian in question, Sebastian rolled his eyes and apparently decided _to hell with it._ He handed John the check, shaking his head, and walked off in the opposite direction. “Thanks…”

            “So, five figures in America’s at least ten grand.” Emili stepped a little closer to John and looked over his shoulder.

            John held the check out in front of him and leaned back, staring at it incredulously and then looking around for Sebastian. “ _This_ is an _advance?”_

* * *

 

            It wasn’t hard to find Sherlock. He had returned to the scene of the crime. John and Emili looked at Sherlock taking photographs of the graffiti with his phone, having gotten someone to open the office door for him, and he’d left it open while he observed.

            The doctor and the teenager had a nonverbal argument over who was going to be left babysitting the investigator. After John looked particularly pleading, Emili sighed and waved him off. He smiled at her thankfully and went to go look elsewhere, maybe to grab a snack from the vending machines. Emili took another look at Sherlock through the floor-to-ceiling windows and then looked off towards the floor.

            Sebastian wasn’t in sight, but his office door was closed and the light was on, so maybe he had gone back into solitude to take care of his own responsibilities. No one in the bank seemed to notice Emili was there, much less care about what a teenager was doing in the staff floor. Most of them were busy, tapping on their keyboards or answering the landlines at their desks, but she had to muse exactly how much concentration it would take away from their jobs if they just looked around and noticed what – or, rather, _who_ – was out of place.

            While she was thinking about it – Emili turned back around to look through the tan wooden blinds on the inside of the office and thought her heart had just fallen out of her chest. Her stupid brother was standing _outside of the window,_ precariously balancing on a narrow balcony step that Emili really didn’t think was safe. She hurried into the office.

            Sherlock wasn’t outside for long before he came back to the interior of the room, and Emili’s heart started to slow down. That was a _long_ fall. She had always liked going up high on roller coasters to feel the adrenaline rush as they plunged back down, but since she had almost fallen from the roof of a college building, she was a lot less inclined to feel that rush.

            Still, what would the world look like from so high up? What would _London_ look like from so high up? While Sherlock disregarded the thought of closing out the window (which Emili hadn’t realized until then was intended to open, fastened to a hinge), she crept over to the opening and put her foot up hesitantly on the ledge, leaning outside, her hands inside the office and holding onto the glass window to her left.

            At first it was breathtaking, like riding to the top of a Ferris wheel and then looking out at the carnival, all lights and color and noise and usually pounding music. Emili had never seen a city quite like London. The streets seemed narrow up here and the people like pinpricks on a map. Cars looked like toys and buildings that had seemed large from the ground looked like she could build them with Legos, or pinch them between her fingers.

            Emili could see the Gherkin, only a fourth of it now higher than she was, but the sunlight and the angle gave her an entirely new perspective on the artistry that went into its architecture. The light hit the black dome of the top of the Gherkin and made the black shine a deep, rose-colored pink instead. She could see a blue-purple haze of lights from another district miles and miles away.

            A gentle breeze played with her pink hair and made a few strands lift from her shoulders and fly across her face, temporarily in her view before they smacked against her forehead and then fell down when the wind subsided, hanging in front of her eyes. Emili felt like she was on top of the world – breathing the freshest air, feeling the coolest draft, and seeing more than she ever could have seen from the streets below.

            Then she actually looked down, and it was a long fall. The understanding of _why_ Sherlock might have stepped entirely onto the ledge fell away, replaced with tension that overtook her posture and an anxiety for the stories between herself and the concrete. She was significantly higher than she had been at Roland-Kerr.

            Suddenly there were heavy hands on her shoulders and Emili almost screamed, for a millisecond thinking she was being pushed, but no – she was pulled back inside, away from the ledge. She shouldn’t have stepped out, not when she knew that heights could be a trigger, and she stood inside while Sherlock closed the window, grateful that he had not only noticed the rising panic, but done something about it.

* * *

 

            The metropolis-like apartment complex loomed more than forty stories over their heads, gleaming silver along the sides. The steps leading up to the doors from the right and left met in the middle on a platform, which was guarded by a tall, thin-barred rail. Emili craned her head back to try to see the top of the building.

            “What do we do now?” John asked, frustration beginning to color his voice after yet another unsuccessful attempt at ringing the corresponding doorbell. “Sit here and wait for him to come back?”

            Despite apparently thinking that Van Coon wasn’t going to answer, John jabbed his thumb against the circular button next to his name yet again. Emili winced. If anyone _was_ in that apartment, she didn’t envy them the number of times John had rung for them. Sherlock studied the name plates beside the buttons passively.

            “It _could_ just be paranoia,” Emili reasoned, trying not to be too sarcastic. It was hard to push back the impulse, however, when she felt that logic could have been used to discredit John’s suggestion. “But I’m pretty sure messages left covertly in the middle of his workplace aren’t exactly friendly. He might have run, or he might not trust us to talk, even if we do wait long enough.” She paused, tilted her head to the doors, and narrowed her eyes. There was only one feasible way to get inside without the help of law enforcement, which would take too long. They’d lose what little edge they had while they were arguing with Lestrade. “Let’s get in ourselves,” she suggested.

            Predictably, John wasn’t all for it. “How?” He asked her, indicating the card reader on the side of the door. Without possessing one, they couldn’t enter the building. Emili admired the security precaution, but she wished that it didn’t have to be installed on the one apartment complex she actually wanted to get into. “You need a key.”

            It was a neat setup, but there were too ways to exploit it. Emili mulled over one of them while she reached for the handle of the door on the right and tugged it towards her experimentally. The bottom of the door’s seal slid on the doorframe, but it didn’t move more than a centimeter.

            “Or an inside participant,” she corrected John, turning to look at the name plates next to the buttons. “He had to have neighbors. We can say we’re concerned,” she tried to sell it. Sherlock wasn’t going to care about a minor infraction, but John was far less likely to be okay with Emili committing what had the potential to escalate into a misdemeanor.

            For the first time since getting out of the taxi at the curb, Sherlock cleared his throat with a forced cough and spoke. “Just moved in.”

            Both Emili and John looked over at him, John stepping away so that he could look at Sherlock from the side instead of trying to see behind him. “What?” John asked, disgruntled.

            “The floor above,” Sherlock impatiently explained, raising a gloved hand and pointing out the name plate above Van Coon’s. The newest one was labeled “Wintle,” and its cardstock was the brightest and cleanest of the rest of them. The name was drawn with a black Sharpie. “New label.”

            John blinked at it, grudgingly conceded that it looked newer than the others, and halfheartedly countered, “Could have just replaced it.”

            Sherlock’s expression was chiding. “No one ever does that,” he lectured John.

            When she stuck her finger on the button and held it down, it echoed a tinny, buzzing sound, almost like the error noise on a game show. It took a few seconds, but the new tenant was available. The communication system turned on.

            _“Hello?”_ A woman’s voice politely asked, a little bit loudly.

            _Oh, good, it’s a woman._ Emili knew that if she were going to let someone inside, she’d be more comfortable if it were someone of the same sex. She also presumed that women were more inclined to trust female voices than men were.

            Adopting a false British accent, Emili greeted her enthusiastically, forcing a grin onto her face so that her tone sounded friendly and open. “Hi!” She beamed. “Um, yeah, I don’t know if you know me, but I’m here to visit my cousin?” The accent felt weird, but being surrounded by people who spoke with it made it easier to forge. “He lives in the flat just below you.”

            _“Ah… no, I wouldn’t.”_ Wintle was buying into it. She sounded apologetic when she admitted that she didn’t know who Em was, and she mentally thanked Sherlock for being right. She didn’t know where she’d begin to backpedal if it turned out that Wintle really had just replaced her name plate. _“I’ve just moved in.”_

            Sherlock coughed quietly into his elbow. Emili whipped her head to look over her shoulder and saw both men staring at each other, John with annoyance and Sherlock with pride. Her brother smirked at the doctor. Emili flipped some pink hair out of the way as she held a finger over her lips, glaring, before she went on.

            “I’m really sorry to bug you, but his shift’s been extended at the bank and I’m usually in Chiswick, so I don’t have a key…”

            _“Do you want me to buzz you in?”_ Wintle offered kindly.

            Emili giggled in relief. “Would you please?”

            There wasn’t a reply, but a moment later, the doors clicked loudly as they unlocked. Emili grabbed at the handle and pulled it back quickly before they could lock again, and she held the heavy door open for her companions.

            Emili dropped her accent and reverted back to speaking like an American. It was much easier to transition back, and it was relaxing to not have to police her own speech. “So, Lestrade says law school, but I’m thinking actress,” she conversationally shared. “Am I convincing?”

            “How did you do that?” The doctor asked her, impressed and trying not to sound as though he condoned the lies she’d just told.

            It didn’t seem like a big deal to the teenager. Everyone lied, at some point or another, and although she might feel bad later about conning a generous civilian, ultimately, she was investigating a crime that freaked out someone else. Maybe Van Coon was in danger. She figured that since she had the right intentions, it wasn’t too terrible.

            “It’s not hard,” she answered, rubbing the back of her head. “Try faking _my_ accent.”

            John shook his head, not even attempting it. “I’ve tried before,” he confessed, still just as British as he’d been a moment ago. “Can never get it right.”

            “Oh…” Emili thought back to the times where she had jokingly mimicked various accents with her friends. Her teachers usually told her she had an impressive ear. Maybe that helped her to pick up on accents. “Well, I guess I’ll blame it on BBC America.”

* * *

 

            “Bag this up, will you?” A loud, masculine voice rang through the apartment after the door opened and shut out of sight. The newcomer was a stranger. “And see if you can get prints off this glass,” he added as he walked into the parlor-slash-kitchen, shooting looks at the messy countertop.

            The CSI member he had been talking to went to go get evidence bags from a supply box on the floor set up near the group combing the pure white furniture. The man who’d given the orders scanned the room with his eyes and then approached the trio of civilians, rolling his head on his neck as if gearing up for a fight. He appeared easily two decades younger than Lestrade. His hair was a little shorter and had a little more gingery color to the light brown, and his face looked rounder and youthful. He carried himself importantly, but his suit jacket was noticeably larger than his waist and the knot of his tie was up very close to his neck. While professional, he looked to Emili like he was trying very hard to come off as stern, severe, and serious.

            “Ah, Sergeant.” Sherlock greeted, holding his hands behind his back innocuously. He tried to smile pleasantly at the man who was definitely from Scotland Yard, but his expression was see-through and impatient. “We haven’t met.”

            The man was much shorter than Sherlock and barely taller than John, which meant Emili was at a perfect height to look right into his eyes and see it as he braced himself to say what he had rehearsed in his head.

            “I know who you are, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t tamper with any of the evidence.” He growled boldly at Sherlock, holding his chin high importantly and keeping his arms still at his sides to show confidence.

            _Too late for that,_ Emili winced apologetically but knew better than to rat out her brother.

            He had no way of knowing what Sherlock had done already, so she thought it was mean of him to just treat them like that and assume that they were going to break rules. “I’m so sorry we’ve offended you by existing in the same space,” Emili sarcastically commented.

            Sherlock’s civil smile dropped faster than bricks out a window. “I’ve phoned Lestrade,” he stated straightforwardly. “Is he on his way?”

            “He’s busy,” the brunet responded quickly. “I’m in charge. And it’s not _sergeant,_ it’s Detective Inspector. Dimmock.”

            He put his right hand out stiffly to John, who looked from the man’s face to his hand with a put-upon face. After a second, John used the arm not around Emili to shake the man’s hand and get it over with.

            Dimmock turned around and strode towards the bedroom, but he stopped right outside the doorframe and kept sending suspicious darts of his eyes towards the trio of independent investigators.

            “I’ve known him thirty seconds and I already prefer Lestrade,” Emili complained to John under her breath.

            “We’re obviously looking at a suicide,” Dimmock announced.

            John held off on making quick judgments. Emili and Sherlock had already made theirs, so it was up to John to be the voice of reason. “That _does_ seem like the only explanation of all the facts,” he cooperatively agreed.

            “Wrong.” Sherlock sent John an almost betrayed glance, then firmly went on to explain exactly why the two were both so incorrect. “It’s one _possible_ explanation of _some_ of the facts. You’ve got a solution that you like, but you’re choosing to ignore anything you see that doesn’t comply with it.”

            Dimmock put his hands down. “Like?” He prompted, not expecting there to be anything.

            “Come on,” Sherlock sneered disappointedly. “The wound was on the right side of his head.”

            Dimmock rolled his eyes. “And?”

            “Van Coon was _lefthanded,_ ” Sherlock said very slowly. He picked up his own left arm and tried to point a finger gun at his right temple, first by going behind his head and then by holding his arm before his face and twisting his wrist. Neither way looked comfortable. “Requires quite a bit of contortion!”

            “Lefthanded?” Dimmock repeated skeptically.

            “Yes, clearly,” Sherlock confirmed dryly. “I’m amazed you didn’t notice, Inspector. All you have to do is look around this flat. Coffee table on the left-hand side, coffee mug handle pointing to the left. Power sockets: he habitually used the ones on the left. Pen and paper on the left-hand side of the phone because he picked it up with his right and took down messages with his left. Do you want me to go on?”

            “No,” John tersely interrupted, growing more embarrassed by the minute as Sherlock showed up the police. “I think you might have covered it.”

            Missing the cue entirely, Sherlock went on, already on a roll. “Oh, I might as well, I’m almost at the bottom of the list.” John’s jaw tightened and his cheeks turned faintly pink. Emili watched her neighbor, intent to hear, but admittedly concerned that he would be forced into her apartment overnight after John locked him out of theirs. “There’s a knife on the breadboard with butter on the right side of the blade because he used it with his left. It’s highly unlikely that a lefthanded man would shoot himself in the right side of his head. Conclusion: Someone broke in here and murdered him.” In the silence that followed from Dimmock, the CSIs, and John and Emili, Sherlock allowed the briefest flash of a satisfied smirk. “ _Only_ explanation of _all_ the facts.”

            Dimmock floundered for something to say. He was so clearly out of his depth that he grasped for anything to hold onto. “But the gun,” he stammered. “Why-?”

            “He was waiting for the killer,” Sherlock finished the story grimly, rolling his shoulders back archly and stalking authoritatively past the inspector, seemingly absorbing all of the latter’s depleted confidence. “He’d been threatened.”

            “What?” Dimmock balked, starting to laugh condescendingly.

            John looked genuinely contemplative as he considered everything once it had been explained, piece by piece, and although normally he discouraged Sherlock’s social approaches, he seemed just as surprised as Dimmock. “Today, at the bank,” he filled in. He piped up quietly, but it was unexpected to hear his voice, so everyone listened to it.

            “A message was left at his workplace, and whatever it was made him panic.” Emili corroborated, nodding earnestly.

            “He fired a shot when his attacker came in,” Sherlock established to account for the gunshot residue.

            Dimmock started to storm forwards, but he halted after one step and raised his arms over his chest. “And the bullet?” He interrogated, raising his eyebrows and reluctantly listening.

            Sherlock had a very prompt answer for that, too. “Went through the open window.”

            The crossed arms fell. “Oh, come on!” The inspector scoffed, insulted that someone was trying to pull something over on him. “What are the chances of that?!”

            If he had been trying to shoot someone who came through the window, then Emili guessed that those chances would actually have been decent. “I’d like to introduce you to the man who hired us at the bank and let you see what the odds are that someone managed to pull off the break-in they have,” she shared, growing a little more upset. “Wait for the ballistics report – it’ll show that the bullet in his brain didn’t come from the same weapon he had by his hand.”

            Dimmock looked at her sharply. He’d seen her before, but now he actually sized her up, checking out her clothes and making a miniscule face at the color of her hair before he reigned it in and realized from accounts of Sherlock who Emili must be.

            “But if his door was locked from the outside,” he slowly questioned, sounding triumphant. He was still hoping that he could stump Sherlock to prove how silly the theory seemed. “How did the killer get in?”

            “Good!” Sherlock’s eyes gleamed brightly. It was the only warning sign that Emili had before she screwed the top tightly on her water and prepared to follow him out suddenly. “You’re finally asking the right questions.”

* * *

 

            Sebastian excused himself from the dinner table and shooed away the staff that was trying to escort the investigators off of the premises. He took Sherlock, John, and Emili towards the restrooms in the back corner of the restaurant and pushed open the door to the men’s room to go inside and talk with more privacy. John sighed, squared his shoulders, and followed after Sherlock, who breezed in behind Sebastian without pause.

            Em looked at the sign on the door as it swung shut after the three males and bit her lip, then decided it was too inappropriate. She turned her back to the wall and slumped down, crossing her arms over her chest. The restrooms were closer to the kitchens. She could smell the delicious aroma of cooking seafood mixed with fresh-baked bread.

            _Sometimes,_ she reflected, _it sucks to be the only girl._

            The men’s room’s door swung open partway and Sherlock stuck his upper body out, peering around until his eyes settled on Emili. “Have you gotten bored?” He asked disdainfully.

            Emili dropped her arms. “I can’t follow you in there, Sherlock,” she pointed out exasperatedly. It was one thing to jimmy a simple doorknob, but she drew the line at waltzing into the public bathroom of the opposite gender.

            Sherlock’s brows and mouth pulled down in confusion and annoyance. “Why not?” He asked.

            She stared incredulously and pointed at the generic sign representing a man.

            Sherlock followed her finger and blinked at the plaque. “Oh, of course,” he realized, bobbing his head briefly in acknowledgment. Then, without any further delay, he reached out, grabbed onto her left wrist, and gave her a hardy tug. Emili stumbled forwards after him while her brother pulled her into the men’s room after him.

            “Sometimes I think you see signs and see them as what rules to break first!” She squeaked unhappily, pulling her wrist away from his hand and tucking her hands under her upper arms.

            _“Sherlock,”_ John protested, looking towards Emili meaningfully.

            Sherlock ignored him. “Where were we, Sebastian?”

            The sound of a zipper caught Emili’s ears, and the russet-haired stranger walked widely around Emili and Sherlock to get to the sinks. His eyes lingered on Emili, just as uncomfortable with her being present as she was, and she steadfastly refused to look in his direction.

            “Harrow, Oxford.” Sebastian rubbed antiseptic into his palms with rhythmic, repetitive motions of his thumbs and fingers. “Very bright guy. Worked in Asia for a while, so…”

            “You gave him the Hong Kong accounts.” John understood. Emili tried to catch up, hearing that she missed a few lines before Sherlock noticed her absence.

            Sebastian nodded once to the ex-army doctor. “He lost five mil in a single morning and made it all back a week later. Nerves of steel, Eddie had,” he reminisced impersonally. “Would’ve done six years for us this November.”

            “Who’d want to kill him?” John asked mildly, coughing quietly.

            The stranger left the bathrooms after tossing out the paper towels he’d used to dry his hands, and Emili felt some of the heat leaving her cheeks. Though she still wasn’t comfortable, it was less awkward once they were alone.

            The banker shrugged in lieu of saying that he didn’t know. “We all make enemies.”

            “Most traders don’t end up murdered in their homes,” she hinted pointedly.

            Sebastian looked at her like he was biting his tongue to refrain from saying something rude, but he relented and looked down to his shoes. “No,” he laughed dryly, “Not usually.” Something pinged, and the sound echoed. “Excuse me,” the Brit shifted and took out his phone from his pants pocket. He checked the screen. “It’s my chairman.”

            He checked his messages while the three from 221 Baker Street stood around. When Sebastian cleared his throat, more of his tone was in place. “The police have been onto him,” the banker stated, sounding agitated. “Apparently, they’re telling him it was a suicide.” He stared hard at Sherlock.

            “They’re wrong, Sebastian. He was murdered.” Sherlock assured him without giving away any hint of uncertainty or deceit, but still, Sebastian didn’t buy it.

            He turned his nose up at the detective. “Well, I’m afraid they don’t see it like that.”

            Before she could change her mind, Em responded. “Of course they don’t!” She exclaimed in aggravation, throwing her arms up. John looked at her quickly in surprise. “They’re not going to tell you he was murdered if it was less than a sure thing, and half of our conclusion comes from the invasion of _your_ business, which you’ve completely neglected to inform the police of!”

            She was ready to start pouring smoke out of her ears. It was stupid not to report a crime, especially one inside a bank. If a bank was penetrable, then the fiscal matters they handled were vulnerable. Scotland Yard should’ve been notified, even if charges weren’t going to be pressed. Sebastian didn’t have the experience or the authority of law enforcement agencies, and Emili was getting sick of his attitude and his treatment of Sherlock. He was buddy-buddy until he was embarrassed, then he was hostile until he wanted something. He needed to pick a demeanor and keep it, because the manipulation, no matter how see-through it was, was infuriating.

            Sebastian took a step forwards. Just as quickly, John and Sherlock both moved. Each took a half-step closer to Emili, making it evident that Sebastian would have to get through them if he wanted to get any closer to the sixteen-year-old. Instead of pushing his physical boundaries, he glared at her between the two other men’s shoulders.

            “I hired you to do a job.” He flatly scolded. Emili held her chin up indignantly. Sebastian did not have the right to scold her. “Don’t get sidetracked, Miss… Mr. Holmes,” he added significantly at Sherlock.

            Sebastian left with a vigor in his gait. Em rotated on her heels to watch his back as he departed and she boxed at the air, imagining she was punching his shoulder before he could push open the door.

            John narrowed his eyes. “Are _all_ bankers supposed to be heartless bastards?” He asked, frustration ringing in his question.

            Emili kept her hands balled into fists. “I _really_ don’t like him,” she growled.

* * *

 

            After a long night of trying and failing to sleep dreamlessly, Emili decided to just stay awake after five AM, having flashes of dark cloth and red-splattered yellow walls in her dreams. She didn’t need a therapist to understand what was keeping her up.

            At about nine, she slid her bare feet into bright green house slippers and covered her mouth in a wide yawn before padding out of her apartment. Like she knew it would, one of the stairs towards the top of the steps creaked underneath her weight as she walked down to 221B.

            She knocked hard on the door. Sherlock was very rarely asleep while there was sunlight illuminating the parlor. No one came to the door, and no one said anything. Emili tried the door; unlocked. She pushed it open and walked inside, looking around curiously.

            Sherlock was sitting in front of his laptop at the kitchen table, which was, for once, free of any sort of science equipment. Emili’s stomach growled quietly. She crossed to the sofa and collapsed down in the corner, kicking off her slippers and curling up into a small little mass of pink and green.

            “I said,” Sherlock said firmly, “Could you pass me a pen?”

            Emili startled. “When did you say that?” She asked in confusion.

            Sherlock didn’t look away from his computer. Sometimes Emili thought it was impossible to startle him, and she envied him his calm composure. “To John, about an hour ago.”

            “John had an appointment at seven this morning to meet with the hiring manager of a health clinic,” she relayed, shocked that Sherlock hadn’t known. “Did you really not notice he wasn’t here? Wow. Future reference, that’s rude.”

            Instead of replying to her comment, or even appearing vaguely apologetic, Sherlock shifted gears. “How’s your maths doing?” He enquired.

            She cocked her head. “How’d you know?” She asked his back plainly, reluctantly admitting that she was still impressed and intrigued by his abilities.

            Sherlock clicked his tongue like it was obvious. “Ink stains on your hand. They weren’t there last night and the only class you use a pen for is maths.” Emili picked up her hands and turned them over. There were marks from the nub knocked against the side of her index finger. “Are you finished?’

            She thought back to her open notebook and the online module. “I can be,” she replied slowly.

            “Excellent.” Sherlock sat back in the chair, his spine still straight, and turned the computer slightly to his right. “Come look at this.”

            When she got closer, Emili could see that it was John’s laptop again, not Sherlock’s. _So much for password protection._ The laptop was opened to an internet article from a London news bulletin.

            _Ghostly Killer Leaves a Mystery for Police_ was the bolded headline. Underneath it was a small profile photo of a slowly but surely balding man in a vest with a crooked smile and a faraway look in his eyes. _An intruder who can walk through walls murdered a man in his London apartment last night. Brian Lukis, forty-one, a freelance journalist from Earl’s Court, was found shot in his fourth-floor flat, but all his doors and windows were locked and there were no apparent signs of a break-in._

            “It’s the MO,” she stated, hesitant to immediately believe that they were related.

            “Happened last night.” Sherlock’s eyes snapped open. He reached for the computer and gently pushed the screen down. “Journalist shot dead in his flat, doors locked, windows bolted from the inside, exactly the same as Van Coon. He’s killed another one.”

            One thing Emili knew about Sherlock was that, although he could be a little obsessive, he was also empirical to a fault. He would argue with police to his last breath, but only if they were incorrect.

            “Don’t we have to find that message somewhere Lukis was to be sure?” She suggested thoughtfully.

* * *

 

            Not for the first time, Emili wondered at how nice it was to have police escorts. All it took was for Dimmock to show his badge to confirm that he was who he said he was, and Sherlock and Emili were permitted up into Brian Lukis’ apartment. Dimmock pushed the master key into the keyhole and opened up the apartment. Sherlock brushed past, knocking the door open wider with his shoulder on his way.

            “What are we looking for?” Dimmock questioned as he pulled the door shut to preserve the scene, slipping the key surreptitiously into the pocket on the inside of his grey blazer.

            A skylight on the right side of the apartment looked in at the living room. A grey suede couch had a black laptop slid towards the back of the cushions, a pair of socks near it for some reason that escaped the American, and various travel magazines. One cushion was clear, and it was just large enough for an adult to sit. As she moved further into the apartment, Dimmock just a few feet behind her, her nose also caught the mildew-y draft coming from behind closed closet doors. She pinched her nose shut and veered towards the desk shoved into a corner, table lamp still turned on above it.

            “Anything that could connect this crime scene to Van Coon’s apartment.” Emili answered after a beat, having waited for Sherlock to give some input. When he failed, she resolved to replying to the questions. Sherlock’s back was to them as he studied the door wide open to the bedroom and gradually stalked inside. “Inconsistencies in the suicide theory that you seem to enjoy…”

            Emili wished that more people had Lestrade’s willingness to be proven wrong and to adapt to facts. She also wished that more of the officers had his patience with her and politeness towards John.

            While she stretched out her gloves to pull up over her hands, Dimmock put his hands on his hips and stood by her, making sure she didn’t do anything she shouldn’t. “What is it with _you_ and thinking you’re better than the police?” He returned, having an easier time finding his voice than he had at the last crime scene. Emili sighed and rolled her eyes as she touched slippery magazine covers through latex, moving them away so she could pick up the datebook underneath. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

            She flipped the book open, but accidentally to the wrong month. “Online school,” she retorted quickly, turning the pages. “I choose my own hours, which means you can’t get rid of me that easily.”

            “Got rid of the short one,” Dimmock commented, looking around with vague interest as if only just then realizing John wasn’t accompanying them.

            “Dr. Watson is working,” she said curtly, closing the datebook.

            Just by looking around, Emili could take a pretty good guess at the kind of lifestyle he lived. With his journalism, he made enough to keep his nice place, but it was tiresome work that he had trouble focusing on. The messy apartment, the scattered magazines and books, the computer right where he might have sat – it was like he’d sit or pace for hours trying to come up with content that someone would be willing to pay him for publishing rights to.

            Unexpectedly, Sherlock’s lower voice called both of them for attention. “Em, come here,” he instructed.

            The teen and the detective both twisted to look and see. Sherlock had pulled open the closet doors, exposing an electric dryer and a washer that had one of the dials broken off. A pair of pliers was on the top, used to twist the thin prong to set the timer. On top of the dryer was a brown briefcase, opened up to show messy, rumpled clothes. Sherlock was kneeling before the dryer with interest, his arms in front of him.

            She lowered herself into a curious crouch at Sherlock’s left side. He held his hands towards her, cradling a black paper flower in his palms. A little less than half of the petals were abused and bent out of shape, like they’d been crushed by a suitcase or the closed closet doors. The shadow from the third person fell partially over the pathetic-looking flower when Dimmock leaned over between them.

            “A piece exactly like this was found with Van Coon,” Emili murmured softly to Sherlock, still not sure that she wanted Dimmock to know. If Sherlock had kept the origami for his own observation, then she didn’t want him to get in trouble. “Remember?”

            Sherlock looked at her like she asked something incredibly stupid. She sighed and nodded and resisted the twitching urge in her hand to do something rude with her fingers.

            “It’s origami,” Dimmock stated, disappointed. “I’m sure lots of people make those.”

            Emili picked herself up from the floor, rising to her feet with her hands on her knees. “It’s not just origami!” She objected. “It’s a serial killer’s signature.” Sherlock stood, too, placing the black flower on the top of a shirt that was half-folded and half-balled up. At least now Emili knew where the icky smell was coming from – the dirty laundry. “Which you would _know_ ,” she stressed, “If you knew how to rule something as murder!”

            Sherlock flew across the room. “Four floors up,” he interrupted them. “That’s why they think they’re safe.” The way he was starting to pick up speed told Emili that he wasn’t speaking to _them_ , but to himself. She still gestured with her hand for Dimmock to listen. “Put a chain across the door and bolt it shut, and they think they’re impregnable.” He stopped cold in the middle of the living room, staring with his head tilted back at the skylight. “They don’t reckon for one second that there’s another way in.”

            _Hold on,_ Emili almost protested, _are you implying that the climber scaled the building and came through that little rectangle?_ The skylight was large enough for a small adult to slide through – definitely herself, possibly John, definitely _not_ Lestrade - but it was at such a steep angle that she doubted anyone would be dumb enough to try.

            Before she could ask, Dimmock unfolded his arms, turning around and shuffling on his feet. “I don’t understand,” he objected, his eyebrows furrowing and his jaw tightening.

            Sherlock’s voice hardened. “You’re dealing with a killer who can climb.” He ripped the desk chair away from the desk, and even though there were pads at the ends of the feet to help it move, he ripped it over so hard that it bounced on the carpet for a second before he put his weight on it, stepping up to stand by the wall under the skylight.

            Her brother pressed hard on the window latch. It made a small squeak before it was forcibly unlocked. Then, with a careful press against the lower side of the panel, Sherlock pushed it partway open, the London street noise magnifying and a small rush of cool, crisper air wafting in.

            “What are you doing?” Dimmock questioned again, not following along.

            Sherlock ran his hands along the edge of the window, feeling at the outside of the windowpane for an indication that it could be opened from the side of the building. “He clings to the walls like an insect,” he called down to Emili. His right hand stopped moving as he found something. Em guessed it was a lock or latch. “That’s how he got in.”

            It was an awful lot of climbing, and at a big risk. Falling from this height, not to mention the height of Tower 42’s Shad Sanderson office, could pulverize a person.

            “What?!” Dimmock declared louder, shaking his head incredulously.

            Emili sent him an annoyed glare. “Are you always this confused?”

            Sherlock drew his hands back inside and pulled the window shut gently. When the seal reconnected, the noise from outside muffled itself as if she had put on headphones, and it made a quiet, subtle _thunk_ noise. “He climbed up the side of the walls, ran along the roof, and dropped in through this skylight.”

            “You’re not serious!” Dimmock objected, scowling distastefully. “Like _Spiderman?_ ”

            Emili said, “That would be ridiculous.” She added musingly, “More like Jessica Jones.”

            Sherlock hopped off of the chair and, impressively, hit the floor walking. “He scaled six floors of a Docklands apartment building and jumped the balcony to kill Van Coon.”

            “Hold on-!”

            “And, of course, that’s how he got into the bank. He ran along the window ledge and onto the terrace. We have to find out what connects these two men.”

            Sherlock reached for his wrists and started stripping off his gloves, ripping them off of his hands, balling them up, and tossing them into the open trashcan beside the door. He pulled open the apartment door and left it wide open when he left, taking a sharp turn.

            Emili sighed. _Does he assume I’ll follow, or does he forget I’m supposed to be with him? … Which is less insulting?_

            Dimmock pushed his hands into his pockets, rocking on his feet, bewildered. “How does he _do_ that?” He asked, scuffing a shoe on the patch of tile he stood on. The detective sounded both infuriated and grudgingly awed.

            “Amazing, isn’t it?” Emili agreed thoughtfully. “Maybe all of us would be more like that if we weren’t so focused on the superficial, and the trivial, and _Keeping Up with the Kardashians._ ” Emili still didn’t know if Sherlock had excellent focus or an extreme attention deficit, but the world might be a less confusing place if everyone had his talents.

            She didn’t realize she had started to zone out while thinking until Dimmock touched her shoulder, giving her a gentle shove on her upper arm for her attention. “Keeping up with who?” He asked curiously, his tone impatient like he’d asked more than once.

            Aside from the immediate disbelief that he had had to ask, Emili stared at him, wide-eyed, for a very long moment. She finally answered, “Do yourself a favor and protect yourself; don’t ever Google what I just said.”

* * *

 

            Sherlock had been thrilled to find the graffiti – or, at least, whatever passed as thrilled for him – but within an hour of their return home, he had printed out photos taken with his phone and taped them up to the mantelpiece above the fireplace. The detective was curled into his armchair, staring straight forward at the printed photographs. Emili was tucked into the couch with her laptop, reviewing every online article she had found that was authored by the latest victim, searching for anything that might indicate an involvement in something dangerous enough to get him killed.

            A door closing suddenly made Emili jump. Sherlock made no sign of hearing such a thing. Seconds later, footsteps started up the stairs quickly, accompanied by a man’s voice shouting up towards the apartment. “Sherlock! Sherlock, you won’t guess what I found when I left the surgery.” Then, quieter, he added, “Well, maybe you will,” as he recalled the man’s stunning powers of being able to know everything before anyone else. “Is Em here?” The door to 221B was pushed open by John, who had a bag of groceries around his wrist and a newspaper held up to his face.

            John was so absorbed with the paper that he didn’t, at first, notice the positions of everyone in the flat. Emili wasn’t sure he realized that she was actually there, because the newspaper was between his eyes and her. Either way, John was buzzing with excitement and alarm.

            “The killer who walks through walls? He hit again last night! He-“

            Just as he took the paper away from his face, John saw Emili, seated at the couch, and Sherlock, staring at the fireplace. The blogger took in the photographs being stared at, the identical yellow shapes, and Emili’s slightly guilty expression, and then put the clues together.

            “… You already found out, haven’t you?” He sighed, his face coloring a little bit in embarrassment. He put the newspaper down with a sigh, the corners of the papers crumpling against his thighs.

* * *

 

            The self-proclaimed consulting detective walked all the way to the side of the building. It was a longer trek than it looked – the National Gallery was enormous. He took a right at the very end, turning down the side of the building and away from tourists and sightseers. A breeze was closer to the ground, and in the shadows from the building, Emili and John both cooled down significantly.

            She heard the noise before she saw its source. A street artist was several meters down the back of the building, shaking a spray paint can. John took hold of Emili’s sleeve and dragged her a few paces away from where they had stopped, and when the guy uncapped the can and started to use it, she saw the fumes and thin mists of paint blow downwind towards where they’d been standing.

            Sherlock watched impassively. John looked very noticeably upset by the turn of events, and he surveyed the vandalism with a hardly-contained grimace. The guy was using the metallic orange to tag his street name, Raz, in all-capital letters underneath the offensive depiction of a beat cop in uniform. Emili knew for a fact that beat cops did not, in fact, have crimson eyes, pig noses, or automatic rifles.

            Raz wore oversized cargo pants that were dangerously close to falling off of his skinny hips, combat boots not unlike Emili’s that were splattered and dotted with paint, and a loose orange vest that had enough large pockets to carry and transport his art supplies. A scarlet baseball cap messed up his dark, ratty blond hair.

            He didn’t look at Emili or John, but took one glance at Sherlock’s distasteful impression of his artwork and snickered. “Part of a new exhibition,” he boasted gleefully, capping the spray can. His tag glistened wetly.

            “Interesting.” Sherlock deadpanned.

            “I call it Urban Bloodlust Frenzy,” he taunted, clearly doing it to further bother the doctor.

            “Catchy,” John stated flatly.

            Em bit her lip. She wasn’t a huge fan of street art when it didn’t serve a purpose. Unless there was a police brutality incident that she wasn’t aware of, she didn’t understand what the use was in drawing such a crude portrait of the civil servants unless he was just being spiteful. There were better things to protest than law enforcement.

            Raz checked the black watch on his right wrist. “I’ve got two minutes before a Community Support Officer comes ‘round that corner.” He nodded to their right in the direction from which the trio had come. “Can we do this while I’m working?” Even as he asked, he bent down to the concrete and lifted two more paint cans. He put one in his vest and started to shake the other.

            Instead of answering one way or the other, Sherlock offered his mobile. Raz peered at the photograph, stopped shaking the can, and tossed it at John. The blogger caught it out of impulse from having something chucked at him, and he surveyed the brand name with discomfort. Raz took Sherlock’s phone after wiping his fingers on his pants.

            “Know the author?” Sherlock asked, cocking his head.

            Raz bit on his thumbnail and shook his head. “No.” He rotated on his heels so the lighting in the back road was facing the same direction. “Recognize the paint, though. It’s like Michigan hardcore propellant. I’d say zinc.”

            “What about the symbols?” The brunet prompted further. “Do you recognize them?”

            Raz snorted ( _like the pig-officer,_ Emili pointedly thought) and passed the phone back to her brother. “Not even sure it’s a proper language.”

            Sherlock stared down his sort-of acquaintance sourly. “Two men have been _murdered_ , Raz,” he gravely stated. “Deciphering this is the key to finding out who killed them.”

            “What, and that’s all you’ve got to go on?” The tightening of Sherlock’s jaw answered the question for him. “It’s hardly much, is it?”

            “Yes, go ahead,” she sarcastically invited. “Rub it in.”

            Raz rubbed his hands off on his pants again. “I’ll ask around.”

            “Somebody must know something about it.” Sherlock insisted.

            _“Oi!”_

            All at once, the four of them turned to look in the direction of the furious shout. It was a support officer, like Raz had said, in a bright neon yellow vest. Emili grabbed at John’s wrist impulsively to get the hell away, but the doctor just frowned at the cop, puzzled. Emili sighed and let go of him, resigned to staying where they were. Unfortunately, Sherlock and Raz hadn’t gotten the memo, because they were both pounding down the street and haring away from the officer. Raz left some of his paint cans behind on the ground.

            When the man caught up to them, he was puffing unattractively. He drew himself up high, taller than John and Emili both, and raised a hand to wag a finger at them condescendingly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?! It’s the bloody middle of the day! This gallery is a listed public building!”

            John’s eyes widened as he realized what the problem was. “No, no, wait, wait, it’s not me who painted that.” John held both of his hands up to demonstrate his innocence, only to realize that he was still holding the spray paint that Raz had thrown. He looked at his hand, shocked, and dropped it straight to the ground. “We’re innocent! I was just holding this. For-“

            It was then that he realized they’d been abandoned. He ground his teeth. Emili patted his shoulder.

* * *

 

            “What about John?” Emili asked after the door back to the main body of the precinct had closed.

            “Being taken care of,” Mycroft answered primly without hesitation. Now that they had some privacy, pretenses were dropped. His professional, polite demeanor matched the smirk he’d had – gloating and arrogant and kind of bossy. “Out with a warning, I should think. Nothing worth putting on any permanent records. However, if you insist on pursuing this decidedly un-civic pastime, might I suggest that eyesore beside the gym on the east side?”

            Emili pursed her lips and tried not to let it get to her. She failed. “You know perfectly well that we didn’t do what we were arrested for,” she accused, glaring and crossing her arms.

            “Sister mine, how are you ever going to learn responsibility if I continue to pay your bail?” He asked her, his taunts wrapped up classily with a bow of feigned concern.

            “You’ve seen my sketching.” She deadpanned back at him. “Do you _really_ think I’m somehow that good with a spray can?”

            Mycroft finally let his infuriating smirk fade from his face, looking down to his toes briefly while he let out a satisfied chuckle. “No, I suppose not,” he allowed, looking back up with a smaller, but no less aggravating, smile. “Your motor skills could use some improvement.”

            Emili had known it would be bad, but she wasn’t sufficiently prepared. Even though she _knew_ he was trying to get under her skin and make her feel embarrassed, it was still _working._ Mycroft had a talent of making people uncomfortably second-guess themselves, she supposed, which came in handy at his job at times but was a real unnecessary kick in the pants when it came to family life.

            Him criticizing _her_ of not having motor skills in a jab really hit something home with her. Maybe she got in trouble, but at least she was out _doing_ something instead of fielding calls from a desk all day. She doubted he’d ever gotten his own hands dirty a day in his life.

            “Says the ass that never lifts a finger,” she muttered rebelliously, feeling her face heat up angrily.

            Emili thought that she had been quiet enough not for him to hear, but apparently, she was wrong. Mycroft’s voice sounded arch in that way it took when he was insulted and wanted to behave as though he was above taking offense. “I assure you that I lifted several fingers,” he told her, looking to the top of her head closely. “At least five, in fact, as I signed to assure my power of attorney.”

            There was a long pause from both of them. Mycroft awaited a retort, while Emili tried to figure out what she could say (if anything) that wouldn’t give up her higher ground. Mycroft kind of had her there – he took care of her, made sure she had everything she needed. She probably owed him a little more for that than just what she did, telling his parents he was a doting, loving, affectionate figure in her life.

            “Yeah, well…” she mumbled, sighed, and uncrossed her arms, letting them drop down so her hands hung at her thighs. “Thanks for getting me out, I guess,” she said quietly, regretting that she had to be the bigger person. “Couldn’t you have been any faster?”

            Mycroft’s smirk grew by a fraction. “I did try, but it’s very hard to move quickly when I have no practice lifting my fingers.”

            Emili just sighed and kept her head down. She knew when she had lost. Mycroft didn’t _have_ to completely wipe it from her record, so she at least owed him a few wins with just the token fussing.

            When she didn’t rise up to the bait, though, the pause became uncomfortable, with neither of them knowing what to say if they weren’t going to bicker back and forth. Mycroft claimed she irritated him like no one else, but Emili wasn’t sure that was quite it. She was convinced he actually enjoyed the bickering. She was quick enough to keep up with it, social enough to know which buttons were off-limits for pushing, and familiar enough to read his reactions and tell how she was doing. She gathered from watching him at work that not a lot of people were very comfortable talking back to Mycroft Holmes, so having some free human interaction with someone who he couldn’t fire was likely enjoyable.

            They waited for the sergeant to come back with John so that they could leave. Mycroft led the way back to the lobby of the precinct and Emili chose a seat by the door, where she could get a slightly fresher breath of slightly less stale air. Mycroft put the tip of his long umbrella down into the thin carpet and leaned lightly on it, hand wrapped tightly around the grip.

            “We’re pretty awful at the sibling thing,” she noted oddly.

            “We’re still on speaking terms,” Mycroft added his point of view quietly. With a long inhale, he switched his umbrella to his other hand. “From my experience, we’ve been doing rather well.” Emili did have to nod agreement at that. “Speaking of, where is that brother of ours?”

            “God knows,” Emili grumbled. “He ran off and left me and John with incriminating evidence.”

            “Yes, I am noticing a trend.” Mycroft sighed irritably and vented. He would never admit that that was what he was doing, but when he extolled the many faults of someone, he was venting, just like Sherlock vented about how stupid Anderson was or how uptight and proper Mycroft acted. “He has _no_ sense of responsibility,” Mycroft accused. “And he _still_ thinks he shouldn’t have been cut off.”

            On that one, it was hard to hold her tongue. Sherlock had never really cared about money, she didn’t think – not since it became possible for him to be content without drugs. “He doesn’t care about money,” she defended loyally. She thought back to the huge check John got from Sebastian and how Sherlock had totally dismissed it. “He’s found something better to do with his time than coke.”

            “Prancing around the city, dragging around a formerly-crippled army doctor and a little girl too curious for her own good?” Emili looked up to tell him off for the rude epithets, but instead snorted indelicately. He had his nose wrinkled like he’d smelled something foul. “Better?” He repeated and canted his head from one direction to the other. “That depends on how you think of him now.”

            “He helps people,” Em still remained on Sherlock’s side of the argument. Although there were things she liked about Mycroft, Sherlock was her preferred one. “He’s not risking his life in an alley to get a fix, so yeah, I call that better.”

            “Helping people.” Again, Mycroft said it after her like she’d made brussels sprouts for dinner. “And that’s why you’re letting yourself be led like a blind puppy!”

            “I’m not!” She protested, snapping her head up to look at him, startled. They had been having what felt like a serious talk about Sherlock, but suddenly things were getting focused back on her, and Mycroft was basically on the offensive.

            “What were you to have done if I had been out of the country?” Mycroft posed to her, flexing his hand around the handle of his umbrella. “Wasted away in a jail cell?” He guessed distastefully. “Our parents are very strongly hoping you turn out more like me than like Sherlock. I would hate to inform them of your recent decent into juvenile delinquency.”

            Emili ground her teeth together. Sometimes she hated the position she was in, living out of 221A above her brother and his roommate, because it gave Mycroft that control over her. He could take it away – worse, he could inform someone else who would take it away and whine to everyone about how bad of an idea it had been the whole time.

            Mycroft seemed to sense that he had touched a nerve, and he continued with barely a long enough space between points for Emili to take one long, deep breath and sigh. “Continue with your grades and you can continue as you wish.” He said, his tone shifting to one far closer to boredom, like Em was accustomed to. “Be more discerning in the choices you make. You may not need to be a role model for Liza, but there are still people who have personal interests in your securities.”

            “Am I talking with one of them now?” She asked seriously, managing to lock irises with him when he looked down while sweeping his eyes over the chairs, debating over whether or not he wanted to take one after all.

            Mycroft didn’t smile. He never let himself smile because of other people, unless he was smiling because he got pleasure or entertainment out of their failure. So it certainly wasn’t a smile that Emili saw. If anything, it was a muscle twitch that happened to make his lips look like they were fractionally smiling for less than a second.

            “If you can’t work that out for yourself, Manta, maybe I should return to calling you a pink fish.” Mycroft suggested, somehow sounding less condescending than his words in a ridiculous, once-in-a-lifetime twist.

* * *

 

            Sherlock left the flat through the door that Emili and John had only entered moments before, moving with the energy that did not fit a man in his thirties.

            Gripping the neck of her bottle, Emili stood up reluctantly. She _hated_ obeying Sherlock and letting him grow to expect her to follow his orders without concern for her, but because she knew that people were actually dying because of whatever they couldn’t find, she couldn’t, in good conscience, ignore what she was supposed to do to help.

            John left the kitchen to look at the closed door. “Don’t you just want to strangle him sometimes?!” He asked in a loud, uncharacteristic outburst.

            Em, without thinking about it, replied, “The scarf would make it really easy.”

            Both blogger and student looked at each other, equally surprised by the other’s proclamation. John cracked a nervous smile and Emili started to anxiously giggle. John offered her a hand while she got out of the comfortably-reclined armchair.

            She fixed her shirt. “If it weren’t for that people were actually dying…” she trailed off wistfully.

            John nodded. “Right, of course.” He responsibly agreed.

            Her neighbor waited politely while Emili put her drink back in the fridge and reclaimed her coat, putting it on and zipping it up under her breasts. They left as an exasperated pair down the stairs. Emili glanced around once they reached the ground floor, but she couldn’t see any lights turned on or any other sign of the landlady’s presence. John held the door for her as they exited.

            On the sidewalk, she noticed that it had somehow managed to get cooler. John stepped up to the curb and held up a hand to flag down a taxi. John and Sherlock were always better at flagging them down than she was – maybe because they were adults.

            Usually, Emili was more than content with her location. Baker Street wasn’t a tourist hotspot, but it was in London, so there wasn’t often a shortage of people. It meant she got to have as much privacy as could be expected in an urban area without being isolated. As a sixteen-year-old female technically living alone, she was glad that there would be people around if she needed help. However, occasionally in the middle of the day, there would be more cars and pedestrians, which made her realize yet again just how big London really was.

            A tour bus honked its loud bass horn from the top of the slight incline of the street. Pedestrians on the other side of the street walked downhill against the flow of traffic on the sidewalk. Emili looked down to the left, but couldn’t see any taxis. They were going to be waiting for a few minutes. She sighed and lazily sought out those pedestrians across the street again.

            The pedestrians looked up and down and then raced across the street in a gap between cars to get to Speedy’s. The café didn’t have the best coffee, but they had _excellent_ sandwiches. Em hoped that their passion was for the Bolognese and swiss cheese and not the European roast.

            She looked across the street again and a spot of black caught her eyes. She focused more intently on the woman standing directly across the street from her, her back to a window. The woman’s face was obscured by a camera. The pink-haired girl swore she came out of nowhere; she had only looked away long enough to see that the small family got across the street.

            The photographer’s camera was sleek and silver, and it was the brightest thing on her. Her black hair was pinned behind the back of her neck, and tight-fitting ebony clothes covered her up. She could even see the ridge of wide sunglasses to the side of the camera, behind pale hands and slim fingers.

            The camera remained raised. Emili tilted her head. She was just standing in front of a flat building – her own, in fact, which doubled her confusion. What was she taking photographs of? Why take pictures of 221B – and why not lower the camera, at least for while Emili was in the shot?

            The tour bus from up the street passed down between Emili and the black-haired woman. The huge vehicle completely blocked the teenager’s view, just giving her a front seat to tinted windows and noticeably bright purple automotive paint. When the bus passed, the other side of the street was empty save for the man on the phone walking past.

            A car honked. Emili jumped nearly out of her skin at how close it was, only just realizing that John had managed to get a taxi to pull over to the sidewalk. John stood with the back door open, waving for her. “You comin’?” He called expectantly.

            She blushed and hurried to the cab, sliding in while John held the door. Her mind stayed stuck on the woman in black. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it was weird – and not just in the quirky, touristy way.

            “Sorry,” Em automatically apologized to the driver and to the blond once she was seated. John climbed in after her and pulled the door shut. The taxi almost immediately started to lurch forward into the street. “I just…”

            _Just what?_ She wondered. _Saw someone with a camera?_ When she was about to say it, she realized how dumb it would sound. She trailed off and swallowed, shaking her head.

            “What was it?”

            She stared at her lap, her eyebrows furrowed as an uneasy feeling crept across her back. “I thought I saw someone,” she said uncertainly.

            “Anyone you know?” John prodded, curious and a little concerned.

            “No… and they’re gone now,” she added, trying to convince herself to stop being creeped out by people with cameras. If she was developing a phobia of that, then she was living in the wrong city. “Was probably just a tourist,” she decided, crossing her arms and looking ahead through the windshield. John hummed noncommittally in agreement.

* * *

 

            “What do you think it’s even going to _be?”_ She wondered aloud to John, hoping he would speculate with her.

            “Dunno.” The blond shrugged and glanced at her while they walked. “Post office, maybe?” Emili pursed her lips. _A post office wouldn’t be very exciting._ She reluctantly took her eyes off of John to start seeking out the address numbers on the sides of the buildings. Before she could really begin, she saw the collision course the vet was on. John obliviously continued, “We’re getting closer; now there’s just-“

            “Watch out!” She warned, too late, as John plowed right into Sherlock.

            Sherlock, just as startled as John, caught the shorter man’s shoulders before either of them tumbled or tripped. He moved John a step back. Sherlock saw Em, nodded to her, and looked down to John, probably to scold him about not watching where he was going (which would’ve been hypocritical).

            John, looking up to Sherlock’s face, saw who he’d run into and scowled. “Right…”

            “What are _you_ doing here?” Em asked, exasperated.

            Sherlock held up a small, crinkled slip of paper from his coat pocket. “Eddie Van Coon brought a package here the day he died,” he answered. “Whatever was hidden inside that case, most likely.”

            _They were both here?_ Part of the troubles Em had been having with connecting the murders was finding how the victims were related. If they’d been at the same place on the same day, then maybe they had known each other; or maybe that place was where the killer saw them together and chose to kill them.

            She started scanning the street more intently, pushing herself up onto the tips of her toes. They still had very little information on what they supposed to be looking for, but the address from the journal was the strongest lead to start with, and then maybe Sherlock would have additional insights to share.

            “I’ve managed to piece together a picture using scraps of information,” Sherlock was saying.

            Then Emili saw it, a few doors down and across the street, just like John had said it would be. She pushed the heel of her hand against his shoulder and pointed. “John! The number!”

            John turned to look, found it after a few seconds, and kept his eyes glued on it.

            “Credit card bills, receipts.” Sherlock continued, not realizing that he’d lost his audience. He was getting wrapped up in that big brain of his again. “He flew back from China, then he came here.”

            “Sherlock,” John interrupted.

            “Somewhere in this street, somewhere near.” Sherlock scratched the back of his neck and looked over John’s shoulder, itching to keep pursuing the path that his roommates had already come from. “I don’t know where, but-“

            _You’d know if you paid more attention,_ Emili thought pointedly. She put emphasis on her stare and flatly informed, “It’s that store across the road.”

            Sherlock, as she knew he would, turned his head to look across the road. The store in question was red with golden trim. It was a small shop, with the address numbers in blocks by the door. A glint of yellow was visible at the top of the door, and mounted over the entry was a huge, unnervingly-scaled cat statue. Em frowned at it in distaste.

            “How can you tell?” Sherlock interrogated, turning back to them and arching an eyebrow skeptically.

            John pointed to the brown book in his left hand. “Lukis’ diary,” he answered, tapping on the delicate paper inside. “He was here, too. He wrote down the address.”

            Sherlock looked down at it. Despite it looking upside down to him, his eyes roved across the page swiftly a few times before he found the line with the address of the Lucky Cat Emporium. When he found it, he leaned back and stared across at the gift shop predatorily.

            “We’re going in the store, aren’t we?” Emili asked rhetorically, sending a longing look at the restaurant just a few yards in the opposite direction.

* * *

 

            The Lucky Cat Emporium – surprise, surprise – sold Lucky Cats. To Emili’s dismay, it _only_ sold Lucky Cats. Emili tried to school the terror off of her face before the store owner saw and took offense. Sherlock made no expression, but went immediately to the wooden Lucky Cats on the higher shelves along the adjacent wall. In place of aisles, the small storefront had tables, each draped with scarlet tablecloths and gifted with dozens of Lucky Cat displays.

            John made the unfortunate error of accidentally making eye contact. “Hello,” he said politely, smiling awkwardly and making an uncomfortably, half-aborted waving gesture.

            The lady perked up, slipped off of her stool nimbly, and circled around the register. “You want Lucky Cat?” She asked him persuasively in choppy English. She gestured to the very nice-looking ceramics on the table closest to her.

            Em bit her lip to stop from giggling at John’s uneasy face. “No, thanks.”

            “Ten pound! Ten pound!”

            “No,” John repeated, smiling apologetically, but making the mistake of continuing to look around.

            Emili held her hands behind her back. Unlike John, she knew that someone was likely walking out with a new mantelpiece decoration. Although she didn’t really _want_ a Lucky Cat, she also didn’t want to look like a rude white girl, especially not in the middle of Chinatown.

            Sherlock was unbothered by his roommate’s struggle, walking slowly down the tables further away from the rest of them. The glass Lucky Cats caught Em’s eyes; in particular, the ones at the end of the table, furthest from the front doors. She went towards them curiously.

            The ones made of glass were, in her opinion, the prettiest. The ceramics were clean and neat, but they had a porcelain look to them that the teenager had never appreciated. The glass were elegant; there were a few that were made of clear glass, through which the gears that operated the waving paw could be seen, and melted into the glass were thin swirls of colors.

            She picked one up carefully. On the bottom of the cat was a sale sticker. In black felt marker, there was a price (heftier than Emili had ever seen for Lucky Cats, but then, she’d never seen them made like these glass ones). As if she wasn’t polite and intrigued enough to buy it already, she then recognized one of the letters from the cipher.

            Emili raised her hand, still in the habit of doing so for attention. “Ní hǎo,” she called, quickly exhausting her conversational Chinese. “Excuse me.”

            John’s relief was unparalleled. The store owner turned around and hustled to her, moving far faster and more gracefully than any woman her height and age should’ve been able to move. “You buy Lucky Cat?” She asked with a hopeful and encouraging smile.

            “Shì de,” Emili nodded, putting down the cat long enough to take her wallet out of her pocket.

            A ten-pound and five-pound note later, the saleswoman was picking up the cat Em had expressed interest in and was carrying it to the front, where she wrapped it speedily in packaging paper and then slid it into a paper bag.

            Em held her hands together and bowed towards the woman. “Xiè xiè nǐ,” she respectfully stated.

            The merchant clasped her hands and bowed back. “Xiè xiè nǐ.”

            At the door, the pink-haired girl stopped and called to the boys. John came to follow her out rapidly, pleased to have an excuse to leave, but Sherlock dragged his heels. Em just walked out the door and waited for him on the sidewalk. If he wanted her to talk or do something, he would have to leave.

            Sure enough, he came outside shortly after. He looked annoyed. “What was that for?” He asked her, his mouth in a firm, irritated line. “This is hardly the time to be getting into your interior decorating, no matter how sparse your flat appears.”

            “Excuse me!” She objected, her eyes widening.

            “It is of the utmost importance that we find what brought Lukis and Van Coon to the same shop days before their demise.”

            Emili crossed her arms and stared rebelliously up at her brother. “Well, if you’d stop ranting for a second, I’d show you what possessed me to get a cat toy,” she retorted with spite. Now there was no way she was going to tell Sherlock she thought it was a pretty Lucky Cat.

            Though the cat was well-packaged, Em took it out of the bag with one hand and untwisted the tie at the top of the packing paper with both. She turned the cat over, cupping a hand over its glass paw, and showed both men the sticker with the cipher underneath the familiar Arabic-based numbers.

            John looked up sharply. “Sherlock, that’s the cipher.”

            The aggravation had melted from Sherlock’s countenance. “Yes, I see,” he murmured, looking back towards the Lucky Cat Emporium. He took the cat from Emili’s hands, turned it around, and looked at the cipher upside down before humming and handing it back to her.

* * *

 

            After their food was delivered (very quickly), John tucked his napkin on his lap and picked up his silverware. Emili chose to try her chopsticks. “Two men travel back from China. Both head straight for the Lucky Cat Emporium.” He looked across the street, to the tacky waving cat over the door. “What did they see?”

            “It’s not what they saw,” Sherlock corrected, his arms folded on the table. He opted out of eating, instead leaving a mostly full glass of water abandoned by his right elbow. “It’s what they both brought back in those suitcases.”

            Many afternoons at Panda Express were paying off. Emili wasn’t embarrassing herself too terribly with the chopsticks. “Yeah, you mentioned one of them had been stuffed full, but there was just a few days’ clothes.” She looked over at the Lucky Cat Emporium again. From further away within the restaurant, she could see that there was an apartment above it.

            Sherlock drummed his fingers on the table. “Think about what Sebastian told us again, about Van Coon – about how he stayed afloat in the market.”

            “He lost five million one day and made it back by the next week.” Em took a drink while she frowned, puzzled. That had seemed weird at the time, but she’d taken it at face value because she had other things in higher priorities. “How did he do that?”

            John was the one who caught on first. “He was a smuggler,” he realized aloud, then hummed in appreciation of his dinner.

            The answer was clear once it was spoken out loud. It explained why there was such covertness and cleanliness to the kills. They didn’t want the deaths to be linked to their operation; they didn’t want law enforcement to realize that the smuggling operation even existed.

            “Of course. That shop must be their drop site for the operatives in London. He makes up enough illegitimate money that he can replace what was drained from the bank.”

            “For a guy like him, it would have been perfect.” Sherlock agreed. “A businessman making frequent trips to Asia. And Lukis was the same – a journalist writing about China. Both of them smuggled stuff out, and the Lucky Cat was their drop-off.”

            John and Em kept trying to participate in the conversation, but they were starving, and so Sherlock had to wait until one of them could speak again. John ate faster.

            “But why did they die?” The vet asked persistently. “I mean, it doesn’t make sense. If they both turn up at the shop and deliver the goods,” which they knew they had, because they’d found it in their agendas, “Why would someone threaten them and kill them after the event, after they’d finished the job?”

            There was nothing to suggest either victim had had anything to do with the other except for that they were apparently in the same smuggling ring. Depending on its reach, they might not have even known each other. It did beg the question what they had done to be killed, even after attending to their duties as smugglers, and why the warning had been given.

            “They would have to know who dropped off what, for their own inner liabilities and tampering purposes.” Em put down her chopsticks and crossed her arms, sucking on the inside of her cheek. “… They might not know who _smuggled_ what, though.” The Lucky Cat saleswoman could only take what she was given, but if someone took something they shouldn’t have – the timing could’ve narrowed it down to the two operatives, but without knowing which it was, they decided to take both lives to send a message. “The assassin killed both because he didn’t know which one had whatever wasn’t given over.”

* * *

 

            Just outside on the doorstep, the doctor was waiting. He stood up swiftly, turned around, and glowered at them as soon as he saw that they weren’t visibly maimed. Emili shrank back and smiled apologetically.

            Sherlock didn’t really care that John was irritated. “The – uh –“ his voice cracked. He swallowed. “The milk’s gone off and the washing’s started to smell. Somebody left here in a hurry three days ago.”

            “Somebody?” John repeated, raising his eyebrows and grudgingly letting go of his issues.

            Sherlock nodded and held out a piece of paper he’d picked up from just inside the door. “Soo Lin Yao. We have to find her.”

            “But how, exactly?” John prompted.

            Sherlock pushed the note towards John. The doctor took it and as soon as he had it, Sherlock started to stalk towards the mouth of the alley. At the top of the paper was the logo and the fancy font of the National Antiquities Museum.

            _Soo Lin, please ring me, tell me you’re okay – Andy_

            “Maybe we could start with this,” Sherlock rumbled.

            John folded the note and sympathetically reached for his neck. “You’ve gone all croaky,” he stated in concern. “Are you getting a cold?”

            “I’m fine,” Sherlock insisted.

            Clearly not believing the detective, John turned to her for a second opinion. Emili put a smile on her face and shrugged. “We’ve got a lead,” she said. “You know how he gets. There’s too much going on now to explain that we were almost choked to death while you were doing your impressions.”

* * *

 

            She’d never run faster than she was running now, not even when she’d been pursued onto the rooftop of the college. She just fled as quickly as she could, adrenaline shooting through her veins, terror clouding her mind nearly out of reason-

            She bolted past another container and a few yards further, her right foot caught on something hard. She let out a short scream, both in pain and in fear, and bowled over. Her balance was ripped away so abruptly that she crashed violently to the ground, slamming her left knee into the dirt. She tried catching herself, but her right hand landed on a line of metal that dug into her palm painfully before her momentum carried her onto her side. Her head smacked on the ground and Emili rolled past the obstruction in the ground.

            As she tumbled from her side to her back again, she felt momentarily weightless before she realized she was falling. Then, before she could really process and react to that, she landed hard with a wheeze, the air knocked out of her lungs. Her head bounced on softer dirt and she groaned with nausea.

            “Em?!”

            A man’s voice called for her and, for just a second, between the panic and the hits to her head, Emili thought it was her father.

            “Em! Is that you?!” More footsteps, but this time there was the voice with them, and as she blinked, dizzily regaining her balance and clearing her mind, she recognized it. It was John, not her father; but, given how close she thought she’d come to dying only moments ago, she was still relieved enough to almost start crying.

            “John?!” She called back, wondering how far he was and sitting up on her knees, looking for him. It seemed even darker than it had been before. “John!”

            The footsteps just paused and then a heavy thud landed behind her. Emili turned her head to look over her shoulder and saw John had jumped down the short, maybe three-foot drop-off on their side of the train tracks. He quickly crossed the short distance to her and moved in front of her, reaching for her wrists, moving his hands up to her elbows, and helping her stand.

            Her legs shook, knees feeling like Jell-O. Emili sniffed and took a hand to her face, delicately touching her cheek. Her face felt hot, but didn’t hurt, and the ache in her head, while not going away completely, was significantly lesser than it had been a minute ago.

            John took her by her shoulders and looked her over, squinting to see in the dark. “We’ve only been apart ten minutes! Oh, Jesus, Em. What _happened?”_ He moved a hand to her face and Emili started to pull away before remembering that she’d hit her head and he was a doctor. Instead of touching her hair, John gently rubbed the hem of his long sleeve over her cheek where she’d touched. “You’re bleeding,” he said with a frown. “From your hand.”

            Emili looked down at her right hand, the one she’d used to touch her face. Her palm and fingers shone in the little moonlight there was to see by.

            “I was being followed,” she hurried to explain, distraught and wiping off her bloodied hand on her jeans. “I _heard_ them!” She moved her other hand to cover her mouth. “I’m not crazy, John, I’m _not_ ,” she insisted shakily. Emili was calming down, and she knew that she’d freaked out, but she also knew what she had heard.

             “No, you’re not,” he agreed without hesitation. His voice was soothing. “Okay? Of course you’re not.” He pulled her towards him and Emili hid her face in his shoulder. She could see even less with her vision obscured by his sweater, but she also felt safer.

            John rubbed her back, leaning his cheek on her head and patiently giving her time to catch her breath and regain her wits. After about thirty seconds – a long hug, but a very helpful one – Emili shuddered.

            “I hate the dark,” she muttered, laxing her grip on his clothes. “I just – I hate it.”

            “Well, lucky for you I’ve got a torch, then, isn’t it?” John gently assured.

            Emili took a small step away and rubbed her face again with her uninjured hand. John took a flashlight out of his belt, felt along its length, and clicked on the button. John, able to see better, rubbed her shoulder as another comfort and swung his wrist around, lighting up the space around them and showing that there was nothing slinking just out of reach. Em tried following the light, seeing for herself.

            As John flashed the light around to his right (Emili’s left), it landed on the side of yet another long container. The teenager was starting to feel like she was in a maze of them. The white color on this was interrupted by a splash of yellow paint – or, as Emili noticed when her eyes were drawn to it, it was more like a _line_ of yellow paint.

            “There…” Emili whispered, crossing her arms to protect her hand and relieved to have found what they were looking for.

            John kept softly comforting her. “Yes, that’s right,” he encouragingly soothed. “You’re safe now, I promise. I’ve shot someone hurting you once before, haven’t I?” The doctor offered her a protective and sweet smile that Emili couldn’t help but return.

            “No-“ she started to correct, but then frowned. “Well, I mean, _yes,”_ she amended, confirming that he had, in fact, gone pretty far to save her life before. “But no, I meant _there,”_ she specified, uncrossing her arms and pointing out towards the container’s side. “Look.”

* * *

 

            The container they brought Sherlock back to shone wetly when John aimed his flashlight at it, and when Emili touched her fingertips to it, black stains were left smudged on her skin. Despite that the paint was fresh, it still effectively covered up every inch of the cipher. Gooseflesh chased up her arms. This was proof that she really had been followed. She had been the only one to hear the footsteps, feel watched, but all three of them could see the hidden evidence.

            “It’s been painted over!” John gasped.

            “You’re sure this is the place?” Sherlock asked Emili sharply. He didn’t sound disappointed, but after a while, Em had learned not to expect things like disappointment or resignation from the detective.

            “Yeah, sure.” Emili waved her phone light around. Even if the wet paint hadn’t been a dead giveaway­­ that there had been something they weren’t meant to see, when she walked over to the train tracks, she found the short stretch she had tripped over and found her blood smeared on the copper-colored rail. “Look, that’s where I fell.”

            “I don’t understand.” John shook his head. Emili doubted that was fully true; John was very clever and it was a pretty simple explanation. “It – it was here! Ten minutes ago, I saw it!” It was a large and tall container, and there had been a lot of cipher. “A whole load of graffiti!”

            “Somebody doesn’t want me to see it,” Sherlock mused.

            Emili raised her eyebrows and wasn’t too sure that he was supposed to have all that emphasis. She strongly doubted she or John were supposed to see it, either, which was probably why her stalker got closer to her when she came close to the cipher. Standing in the dark, surrounded by tall freight containers, it was easy to worry that she was somewhere she definitely wasn’t supposed to be.

            Before she realized Sherlock had moved for her, his hands grabbed onto her shoulders and turned her around. She tensed up all at once, still prepared to run, and Sherlock moved his hands to both sides of her head and started to move in circles, forcing her to move along with him.

            While not the strangest thing Sherlock had ever done, Emili was very not in the mood to put up with his personal-space-invading, unexplained quirkiness. She sighed and glared up at him. “This is not the proper means of comforting a traumatized teenager, Sherlock,” she educated sternly.

            “You’re not traumatized, you’re fine.” Emili frowned and opened her mouth to object to that on principle – she was bleeding and stalked by a homicidal smuggler, so no, she felt like she _wasn’t_ fine – but Sherlock cut her off. “Shh, concentrate. I need you to concentrate.” _Well, if it’ll help you,_ Emili sarcastically thought. “Close your eyes.”

            Keeping her eyes open on Sherlock, who was moving with her, kept her from getting dizzy. “I don’t think so.”

            Thankfully, he moved his hands off of her head. The downside was that he moved them to her upper arms instead, and he squeezed tightly, spinning her still. Emili kept trying to steal glances at the short drop-off to make sure she wasn’t about to fall over it – _again._

            Losing her patience, she accused, “Are you _trying_ to make me trip?”

            “I need you to maximize your visual memory,” Sherlock impatiently explained. Emili raised her eyebrows. “Try to picture what you saw,” Sherlock commanded, trying to coach an uncooperative non-volunteer. “Can you picture it? John, take notes. You’re next.”

            “I’m what?” John asked, alarmed.

            “Yep.” Emili flatly stated. “Got it.”

            “Can you remember it?” Sherlock prompted, not letting go of her.

            “Ab-so-lutely.” She dryly replied, eyes locked on his to show just how very unimpressed she was with his behavior.

            “How much can you remember?”

            “All of it.”

            “Are you sure?” Sherlock stressed, highly skeptical, “Because the average human memory on visual matters is only sixty-two percent accurate.”

            “Mine’s one-hundred percent,” Emili sassed back at him. She knew the claim wasn’t true, but Sherlock was being ridiculous, so she thought she was allowed to make some ridiculous statements, too.

            Sherlock’s scoff let her _feel_ his cynicism. “Oh, really?”

            “Yes!” Emili shrugged violently and reached up to shove his arms away from her. “Or, at least, it will be, when you let me get to my phone!” She cradled her right hand to her chest and reached into her pocket with the other. “I took photos. We’re not idiots, we realize someone doesn’t want us to find these.”

            Truthfully, she’d taken the photos on the off chance that she could convince Sherlock to leave the train yard sooner. Em let her fingerprint scan open the lock screen and drew up the large, flash-enabled photographs of yellow Hangzhou. Sherlock actually looked a little embarrassed – or, at least, as cowed as she had ever seen him look, which probably amounted to about the same thing.

* * *

 

            Once they had figured out that Soo Lin was hiding in the museum and coming out to take care of her antiquities, it wasn’t hard to find her. Emili just hoped that the assassin wasn’t as quick as they were to figure it out.

            Less than an hour after they had entered the museum, the live camera feed on the room with the pots caught the shadowy movement of someone entering the area. They all watched while she kept her face turned away from the security camera’s view and unlocked the display cabinet where her teapots were kept. She took two out carefully, cradling them in her arms, then gently locked the glass door again and left to return to wherever she’d crept out of to tend to her hobby.

            The basement had long corridors and large, rectangular-shaped rooms. Most of them were used for storage of furniture, displays, and pieces that the museum didn’t have on the current rotation, but there were a couple of them that weren’t as full.

            Soo Lin had the lights off and was making tea with the pots, using a percolator that she had plugged into an outlet on the floor and a bottle of filtered water. She was standing patiently in front of a collapsible white table that she’d set up in the center of the room. Although they were reasonably sure she was innocent, it was also eerie to find her in that way.

            Sherlock crept in. _For a six-foot-tall guy,_ Emili thought, _He’s pretty quiet._ He was only quiet until he was less than a foot away. From where they were standing, they heard his voice faintly, but all Emili could hear of the words were that his voice went up to intone a question. Soo Lin, startled, jumped away from him and let go of the pot. Before it crashed, Sherlock caught it a couple of feet from the floor. Emili slipped in through the half-open door and John followed.

            “This is centuries old,” Sherlock reminded Soo Lin, his voice soft and low. “You don’t want to break that.”

            “Scaring her like that was just mean,” Emili scolded him, crossing her arms.

* * *

 

­            Soo Lin was calm and very cooperative. She told John where to get chairs, but not one of the three investigators took her up on the offer. The storage room was a lot less creepy once Emili turned on the overhead light, which spread fluorescent light to every corner of the room.

            Sherlock briefly explained why they were there. He was so brief that John elaborated a bit so Soo Lin had a bit more to go off of. The Chinese frowned. “You saw the cipher?” She checked. All three of them nodded gravely. She thinned her lips and bowed her head in acceptance. “Then you know he is coming for me.”

            “You’ve been clever to avoid him so far.” Sherlock stated, watching Soo Lin for her reactions and to catch nuances in her speech.

            She just looked down at the clay antiquities and gestured to them delicately with her small, soft hands. “I had to finish… to finish this work.” She specified after a second. Emili almost flinched as she wondered how many things Soo Lin wasn’t planning on getting to finish. “It’s only a matter of time. I know he will find me.”

            “Who is he?” Emili caught the way that Soo Lin said it like she knew it as a fact, but Sherlock was the one who had asked. “Have you met him before?” The way she seemed familiar with the skills made it seem like she might.

            The restorer reluctantly nodded. “When I was a girl, living back in China.” Soo Lin swallowed hard. “I recognize his… signature.”

            “The lotus flower?” Emili blurted curiously. She only realized after she had spoken that Soo Lin was probably referring to the spray paint. Soo Lin looked straight at her and appeared discomfited. “He keeps leaving a paper lotus flower.”

            Soo Lin nodded. “It is their calling card. All of them know to make it.”

            Soo Lin put a hand down on the table and picked up her leg. She pulled her dressy flat off her left foot and tugged off the sock, then sat down on the stool and lifted her foot to show a tattoo on the underside of her heel. It was a simple lotus flower inside a thin circle, all in jet black ink.

            “You know this mark?” She asked Sherlock, looking up and seeing his grim recognition.

            “Yes. It’s the mark of the Tong.”

            “Hmm?” John looked between them, as lost as Emili.

            “Ancient crime syndicate based in China,” Sherlock offered shortly, but didn’t want to take the time to explain much more than that.

            Soo Lin put her sock and shoe back on. “Zhi Zhu leaves the flower so there is no doubt why they died. Who killed them. Fear is a powerful tool in China. Every foot soldier bears the mark. Everyone who hauls for them must get this tattoo.”

            Emili preferred it when the assassin had been nameless. “Zhi Zhu?” She repeated, feeling worriedly like she was going to summon him just by calling for him out loud. Giving the killer a name made him feel more like a person.

            “The Spider.” Sherlock translated.

            John was a good listener and was paying close attention to everything behind said. “Hauls?” He repeated suspiciously, uncrossing his arms and looking at the pretty, slim woman in surprise. Emili thought she saw a little bit of judgment, too. “You mean you were a smuggler?”

            “John,” the teenager said quietly, looking across to the veteran and meeting his eyes. John’s criticism was palpable, but he stopped and listened. “A lot of recruits joined because they had nowhere else to go.” Emili understood why people did things out of desperation. The fact that Soo Lin had run away from the Tong was enough to demonstrate that she knew it had been a bad profession, and considering her life was now being threatened by her past connections, they had much bigger issues to think about than whether or not Soo Lin had been a smuggler years ago.

            John’s expression softened. Soo Lin imploringly put another few cents in. “I was fifteen. My parents were dead. I had no livelihood,” she continued, fidgeting with her hands in front of her abdomen. “No way of surviving day to day, except to work for the bosses.”

            Sherlock had very few social graces, but Emili was proud to report that he had become slightly more aware of when to use his nice voice. And by that, she was just referring to the slightly softer tone that seemed less factual and much less confrontational.

            “Who are they?” He asked, canting his head.

            “They are called the Black Lotus.” Soo Lin let her eyes drop down briefly towards her feet. That did explain several questions. “By the time I was sixteen, I was taking thousands of pounds’ worth of drugs across the border into Hong Kong. But I managed to leave that life behind me. I came to England. They gave me a job here. Everything was good; a new life.”

            “Then he came looking for you,” Emili’s brother prompted, continuing the story and wrecking the happy ending.

            Soo Lin nodded at Sherlock. “Yes,” she confirmed needlessly. “I had hoped after five years, maybe they would have forgotten me, but they never really let you leave.” Emili tried to guess how she would feel if she were allowed to escape and granted the freedom of her own independent life, only to then learn that the safety was just an illusion. “In a small community like ours, they are never very far away. He came to me in my flat. He asked me to help him to track down something that was stolen.”

            “Don’t suppose you’ve any idea what it was?” John questioned hopefully.

            Soo Lin apologetically shook her head. “I refused to help,” she explained, frowning.

            On one hand, Emili was shocked that she had told the Tong “no” and was still alive days later. That didn’t seem like the kind of thing they would take very lightly. Then again, maybe Zhi Zhu had needed permission from the Black Lotus to go in for a kill so he didn’t draw too much attention while they were outside of China. That would explain why he had gone back to Soo Lin’s apartment when Emili and Sherlock were inside.

            It didn’t, though, explain the photograph Emili remembered seeing, where it looked like someone had been reminiscing on Soo Lin. Unless... _she said she knows him…_ She wondered how likely it was that she would come to know an assassin well without having been on the hit list before and figured that, with an organization that did so well to cover up its tracks, it wasn’t very likely.

            Suddenly, the smudged marks on the photograph of the two Chinese children made more sense to Emili. “He’s your brother, isn’t he?” She guessed softly.

            John’s eyes widened. “Hang on,” he put a hand up. “Your _brother_ is out to _kill_ you?”

            He looked apologetic once he had realized what he’d said, but Soo Lin was already nodding and continuing to elaborate on the circumstances. “Two orphans… we had no choice.” She rubbed a finger underneath her eye, wiping away dampness. “We could work for the Black Lotus, or we could starve on the streets like beggars.”

            The student thought for a moment. Given the choice, what would she do? Despite what Soo Lin said, there _had_ been a choice there, but it was a nasty one, and Emili was pretty sure she’d do what she had to for her life. Then again, smuggling was one thing. Becoming a damn ninja assassin was another.

            “My brother has become their puppet,” the restorer bitterly accused, looking down and shaking her head. “In the power of the one they can Shan – the Black Lotus’ general. I turned my brother away… he said I had betrayed him. The next day, I came to work, and the cipher was waiting.”

            Sherlock took two folded-up Polaroid photographs out of the inside pocket of his Belstaff coat and flattened them out. He passed them to Soo Lin, who took them compliantly but with uncertainty. “Can you decipher these?” He asked her intently.

            The woman held them beside each other and looked at each. “These are numbers,” she informed, sliding the photograph from the library underneath the one from Tower 42. “Here, the line across the man’s eyes – it’s the Chinese number one.”

            Sherlock nodded, a touch impatient, and reached over to tap his finger beside the edge of the photo. “Yes, and this one is fifteen. But what’s the _code?_ ”

            “All the smugglers know it,” Soo Lin replied, seeming surprised that Sherlock didn’t already know this, too. “It’s based upon a book.”

            _A book? Or any book?_ Emili was just about to ask when the lights in the room went out. The darkness was so sudden that for several seconds, she couldn’t even see faint silhouettes of her companions.

            “He’s here…” Soo Lin whispered. The terror in her voice was unmistakable, but no one moved, not even the girl with the most to fear. “Zhi Zhu.”

* * *

 

            Considering that she hadn’t been convinced she was ever going to actually wake up, it was a pleasant surprise for Emili when she did. The pleasant surprise quickly turned sour when she became aware of the splitting headache in her skull. It throbbed with every pulse of blood in her head.

            The voices around her didn’t help matters. Sherlock snapped angrily. His voice was close to her ear. “You’re a doctor!” He accused, and Emili belatedly realized that she was being held up by arms under her torso, keeping her held to a man’s chest.

            _“I don’t know,_ Sherlock!” John shouted back, sounding panicked and upset. “All I know is that she’s breathing, and she’s not been shot!”

            Emili slowly opened her eyes. She could see Sherlock and John’s faces. Both were worried, John was a little guilty and his face was red.

             “Sh’rlock…?” Emili asked groggily. Her mouth felt a little numb and she slurred a bit.

            “Yes, we’re here, Em.” Both men had gotten quiet when she spoke, but Sherlock was much calmer and softer when he spoke to her. The clever detective shifted his arms to prop her up a little more vertically. “What did he do?”

            “Ow.” Emili was already distracted, grimacing and squeezing her eyes shut. “My head…” she moaned.

            John’s relief was palpable. He touched her head and pushed his fingers through her hair soothingly. “It looks like you have a nasty cut,” he said sympathetically. “Maybe even a concussion.”

            Sherlock shifted his arms a little bit to help her sit up, but it changed where she was looking and she shut her eyes again with a groan. Light made her head hurt worse. “… Can I go to a hospital now…?” She asked, grimacing.

            Both of the men laughed. John’s was very nervous and concerned. Sherlock sounded slightly more affectionate, and he moved one arm out from behind Emili’s back and pushed his hand underneath her knees.

            Emili mumbled. “Let me up,” she protested quietly.

            “Nonsense,” Sherlock stated briskly. “I’ll carry you. For all we know you could be concussed to the point of walking right off the steps.”

* * *

 

            “To kill his own sister.” John shook his head and looked to his left, out the window. “When someone’s willing to do that, there’s more than just a price on her back, there’s something _wrong_ with them.”

            “It’s not just a criminal organization,” Sherlock interrupted, responding to the doctor’s disgusted statement. “It’s a cult. Her brother was corrupted by one of its leaders.” Corrupted like a virus on a computer. The brain was really just a very complex, chemical-soaked computer, wasn’t it?

            Emili knew that one of the big reasons that gangs survived as well as they did in some cities was because they served as a function of family for people who had no one else. Orphaned children would be an easy target to indoctrinate. She just wasn’t sure how one sibling became so brainwashed while the other learned she needed to run.

            “Soo Lin said the name.” John started to say, and almost hesitated like he didn’t want to say it.

            “General Shan,” Emili supplied in a murmur. The name itself wasn’t so intimidating, which was weird, because she’d been expecting something much scarier. It just went to show that shadows are often a lot scarier than the objects that cast them.

            “But we’re still no closer to finding them,” John finished his thought in agitation and looked out the window again. His lips were pursed with frustration and his sharp, angry eyes glared through the glass. _He has a sister,_ the American suddenly remembered.

            Sherlock snorted softly. “Wrong. We’ve got almost all we need to know. She gave us most of the missing pieces. Why did he need to visit his sister? Why did he need _her_ expertise?”

            Soo Lin had no formal education, probably because to enroll in a university, she might need documentation that she, as an orphaned Chinese runaway, couldn’t provide. The Black Lotus could go to anyone for what they wanted, threaten any professional or expert into giving them information. If it were info on a smuggling skill, then they could ask any one of their many operatives.

            “She worked at an antiquities museum.” Emili said slowly. She worked in a museum department that specifically handled relics from ancient worlds and empires long dead.

            “An expert in antiquities. Mm, of course. I see.” John nodded, calming himself slightly as the subject was changed.

            Sherlock’s phone remained in his hand. His eyes glanced to it, but he didn’t lift it up again. “ _Valuable_ antiquities, John. Ancient Chinese relics purchased on the black market.” Emili felt her lips quirk proudly for her theory being validated. Sherlock had been wrong before and probably would be another many times, but if she was coming to the same conclusions as the smartest person in the room (she wouldn’t tell him that) then she was doing something right. “China’s home to a thousand treasures that were hidden after Mao’s revolution.”

            “And the Black Lotus is smuggling them out and selling them for the money,” Emili concluded, feeling triumphant and smart and like the fact that they’d figured it out was a big middle finger to the assholes who thought it was okay to kill people and bludgeon other people with guns. “I guess the drugs weren’t lucrative enough anymore.”

* * *

 

            She turned around and picked her way through the books, walking in a not-quite-straight path towards the hearth. Sherlock was turned so his right side was facing the fireplace. She brought her hand up and laid it over the cover of the book he had just picked up and said, with all the authority she could possibly feign, “Sherlock, it’s time to take a nap.”

            “Don’t be stupid, Emili,” Sherlock responded flippantly, merely moving the book out from under her hand and resuming his pace. “It doesn’t suit you.”

            She couldn’t decide if she was going to be bothered that he was acting unreasonable or let it go because he had given her what she thought was as close to a compliment as Sherlock would ever get.

            “There’s much more work to be done,” he continued calmly, sorting the two books and taking another small handful. “If you’re tired, you can kip on the couch.”

            Emili crossed her arms, put her hip out, and waited. After a second of her dull stare, Sherlock lifted his head and looked around the apartment, finally realizing how littered it was. The couch had long since been turned into another makeshift table, and there wasn’t enough room for anyone to sit, much less take a nap.

            Sherlock looked back away from the room and amended himself. “Alright, on my bed, then.”

            “I have my own perfectly good bedroom in my apartment,” she exasperatedly reminded him, “Which is literally a thirty-second walk away.”

            “There’s not any time to waste. You won’t hear me if I call,” he accused, which was probably true unless he added screechy, torturous noises on his violin into the mix.

            “Aren’t you going to sleep?” She questioned, not wanting to take his bed if he wasn’t going to have anything to lay down on.

            “I frequently go for days without sleeping,” he reminded unnecessarily, and added in an airy, unbothered tone, “It bothers John as well.”

            Forcing her tone to go casual, she shared an interesting fact she’d read after he’d more or less admitted to being a former junkie. “You know, a study showed that sleep deprivation could be linked to increased drug cravings.”

            “A study conducted by the Mclean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, funded by the NIH and NIDA.” Sherlock agreed promptly, somehow able to tell exactly which study she was referring to. She shifted her weight to stand normally, chagrined. Nothing was ever able to throw him. “It rather figures you would know a study conducted by the Americans.”

            She exhaled deeply. Sherlock went through spells where he was determined to stay clean, and then brief periods where he got cravings and was catty, slobby, and generally acted like he was in withdrawal. Those were usually when he was super bored – stress and intrigue kept his brain too occupied for him to long for a hit. Emili wondered sometimes whether she should really be exposed to that sometimes unpredictable behavior, but chose to think about something else before she got too uneasy.

            It surprised her that he was so nonchalant when he had so much riding on his sobriety. The Holmes’ parents had cut Sherlock off because he was using their money to afford contraband, which was why a member of a relatively wealthy family had to share an apartment. Additionally, after an overdose scare, Mycroft had started paying more attention to Sherlock and his safety, which she was sure had to make Sherlock’s skin itch in all the wrong ways. None of that even considered that, although drugs could make someone feel alive, if he used them too much, he stood a very high chance of losing his most valued asset – his brain.

            “The sheets are clean.” Sherlock pointedly told her after almost a minute of her just standing there, exhaustedly arguing with herself over whether to argue with him, go upstairs, or just flop down on the floor and pass out.

            _Sleeping in his bed isn’t nearly as much as he’s asked in the past,_ her sleepy brain pointed out to her. She sighed and conceded, taking off her sweater, putting it up on the rack by the door, and then went to Sherlock’s room.

            He certainly worked with a minimalist style, she mused, and then dismissed the thought as stupid. Sherlock wasn’t into style at all, and she was being stupid if she thought otherwise. He just didn’t like sentiment, so he didn’t keep what he didn’t have a use for.

            Em toed off her shoes beside his bed and pulled the blankets down. They smelled just a little bit like him, but more so like the laundry detergent. Right away, she was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable she was and failed to keep her eyes open.

* * *

 

            Emili was already tired beyond belief when she woke up, but the blaring honking of a panicking taxi outside hadn’t shut up quickly enough to let her stay asleep. She remained curled up in bed for a minute before rolling onto her back and stretching out.

            She kicked the blankets off and checked her phone. She’d slept like a baby for almost six hours. Although she yearned for more, she knew she’d totally ruin her nights if she didn’t get up now, and besides, if she took too long, Sherlock might forget that the entire point of shooing her into his room was so he could get her quickly and just leave without her.

            She took a minute to stretch and prepare herself to go out, only just noticing her rumbling stomach. The girl made the bed quickly, re-fluffed the pillows, and pulled the door shut behind her when she left everything as it had been.

            “Afternoon,” Sherlock said, his back still to her when she came out. He was looking up at his wall of fascinating things. “You consider yourself normal, yes?”

            She eyed him warily. Something that started that way probably wasn’t good. She answered while crossing to the kitchen in search of a snack to curb her appetite. “Less and less so, as of recently.”

            “What’s a book people like yourself would own?”

            Emili opened up the fridge and was disappointed by what she saw. How did John even survive when he got the munchies? She took a bottle of plain water out, since she wasn’t a huge fan of soda, and relished the coolness on her skin.

            “Um… dictionaries, thesauruses, religious books… we’re in England, so most likely a Bible. An encyclopedia.” She shook her head. Those were staple things. Emili owned a thesaurus for school, but for anything else, she used the internet, and she wasn’t religious. People like her – other teenagers – were unlikely to have those. “Pop culture, I guess. Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games. Some people like Stephanie Meyer…”

            Sherlock’s lip was curled in distaste when she gave him another look. “That’s not very helpful,” he complained.

            “You didn’t ask the right demographic,” she told him, rolling her eyes and paying more attention to the kitchen. “I’m sixteen.” She opened up the cupboards, didn’t find food, and tried others. There was a pack of energizing protein bars that she reached easily. They must’ve been bought by John. “We’re dealing with men in their thirties who smuggle priceless antiques, not girls with too much free time.”

            The door opened with a click and a little, modest creak. John came in, all cleaned up and looking suspiciously more rested than he had been when he’d left. Emili hoped he’d had a good first day at the clinic, but was afraid that mood was about to come to a halt.

            “Ah!” Sherlock spun around, determined. “John. Excellent. What’s a book you-“

            Emili ripped open her energy bar. “Somehow, I don’t think this tactic is going to work,” she commented before taking a big bite and humming appreciatively.

            Sherlock paced for a few minutes. John looked bleakly at his favorite chair, laden with books, and began to painstakingly move them out of the way. Emili ate the entire protein bar, decided she was hungry enough for more, and stole a second one from the box before putting it back where she had found it.

            “… I need to get some air,” Sherlock announced suddenly. “We’re going out tonight.”

            “Where to?” Emili asked curiously. She didn’t have to force the interest in her voice. London still felt kind of novel to her.

            “Actually,” John coughed, arms full of books while he moved them out of the way. “It’ll just have to be the two of you.” Emili and Sherlock both looked at him blankly, and her brother even appeared slightly insulted. John gave them a very awkward smile. “I’ve, er…” He coughed. “I’ve got a date.”

            Sherlock just looked even more displeased. “A what?” He interrogated.

            John blinked, then seemed to decide that if anyone didn’t know what a date was, it would be his socially stupid roommate. “It’s where people who like each other go out and have fun,” he explained.

            Sherlock just stared back at him, disappointed and a little affronted. “That’s what _I_ was suggesting.”

            Emili had been taking a drink, but now choked on her water. After swallowing painfully, she turned her head into her arm and laughed.

            “No, it wasn’t.” John replied. Then he had to realize that he wasn’t actually entirely sure, and added, “At least, I hope not.” The awkward, pouty silence from Sherlock made him gesture over at the pink-haired accomplice. “Take Em. Bond with your sister.”

            What, did John think Sherlock was going to take her to the mall? Not unless they sold cadavers for scientific experiments, and in that case, Emili was pretty sure she’d rather stay home.

            “To bond is to establish a relationship founded upon shared feelings and interests.” Sherlock recited at John like he’d read it out of a dictionary. “Emili and I have bonded more in this past month than I have with my parents in the last many years.”

            “I don’t know if that’s flattering or just sad,” she remarked uncomfortably. They hadn’t done a ton together, other than exist in the same general space while doing different things and solving cases that they happened to find. “Is it Sarah?” She asked John to change the subject.

            “Yeah… how’d you know?” John didn’t seem challenged or defensive like he would have if Sherlock had been the one asking. Both of the Holmes siblings looked back at John almost pitiably. John sighed. “That obvious, was I?” He asked rhetorically.

            “Where are you taking her?” Emili asked, politely showing interest.

            “Ah…” John blanked for a moment and it showed on his face. He chose something comfortable and normal on the spot. “The cinema.”

            Sherlock snorted. “Dull, boring, predictable.” Emili was ninety percent sure that her brother had just completely missed that all of those adjectives were the entire _point_ of John’s choice. Also, he’d missed ‘safe, familiar, and public.’ “Why don’t you try this?” He swept a piece of paper off of the mantel. He carried it over to John, who had only just sat down, and dropped it on his lap. “In London for one night only.”

Sherlock was the last person Emili expected dating help from, so she was dreadfully curious just to see what he was suggesting. It was an advertisement flyer for a Yellow Dragon Circus, an event hosted by a traveling Chinese troupe.

            John chuckled and put it aside without a second look. “Thanks, but I don’t come to _you_ for dating advice.”

            “Actually, it’s not a bad idea,” Emili said in surprise. She would have thought her brother’s idea of an ideal date would include something like a crime scene or maybe a murder museum. Maybe a symposium on chemistry or something. “Just keep the clowns away from her and it could be a lot of fun.” John looked over his shadow and Em hastily explained, “I don’t like clowns.”

            Sherlock left the center of the room and went back to his favored place before the fireplace. “Caulrophobia.” He stated simply.

            “What’s that?” John looked up, thinking he’d missed something, while Emili threw a dirty glare at the detective’s back.

            “The phobia of clowns,” he answered, missing the hint from his adopted sister.

            John started to smile. He tempered it quickly, but she had already seen. “In America, it’s not called a phobia,” Em huffed, crossing her arms with the water sloshing in the bottle. “It’s called _survival sense._ Do you have any idea how many murderers have dressed up as clowns?” She demanded. Sherlock ignored her. “Look up John Wayne Gacy sometime,” she told the doctor defensively.

* * *

 

            Emili was making yet another go at _Pride and Prejudice_ in the break between the action. Sherlock had been unusually calm and patient the entire day, and even brought her up a sandwich from Speedy’s for dinner. It occurred to her to be suspicious, but she couldn’t imagine what he was up to that involved niceness being a bad thing, and her sandwich had tasted fine.

            “Emili, are you coming?” He interrupted her rereading of the same damn page for the second time, since she kept losing her focus. When she lifted her head, startled, he was turning down his coat collar and already had on his boots.

            “Yeah, yeah,” she hurriedly pushed her book aside. “Where are we going?”

            He smiled at her with a mischievous, mysterious glint in his light blue eyes. “The circus,” he answered.

            That sounded like one of the better “field trips” he’d ever taken her on. “Cool, a cir-!” It took her just a second, and when she got it, her face fell. “Wait…”

* * *

 

            The Opera Singer raised her hands halfway. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she called, speaking for the first time. Her voice was definitely feminine. Her English was clear and her accent was noticeable, but faint. “From the distant moonlit shores of the Yangtze River…” Sarah excitedly turned her head to John, glancing at him before looking back at the performance ring. “… We present, for your pleasure, the deadly Chinese bird-spider.”

            _The Spider._

            The Opera Singer began walking in the direction of the stage, her dress following after her. It was longer in back than in front, which Emili hadn’t noticed before. She hiked it up a few inches as she stepped over the candle ring to make sure it didn’t catch light.

            As she stepped neatly up the stairs to the stage, headed after the other three who had just left, the two black-clad assistants who had come out with her initially followed in single file behind her at a nonverbal cue, right as a large figure began to fall from the high rafters.

            It only took Emili a second of the surprised murmuring to realize that it was an aerialist. The acrobat rolled down a long, thick, red nylon ribbon and caught himself about six feet in the air, holding himself parallel with one hand wrapped in the cord above him and another clutching the length that hung below.

            “Did you see that?” John asked Sarah, impressed, clapping his hands with the crowd politely.

            Emili had always loved to watch aerialists, but this particular performer had none of her admiration. “Zhi Zhu…” she whispered to herself. His face was hard to discern in the lighting (which she was beginning to think was intentional), but it had to be him. He wore long, billowy black pants that cinched at the waist, and a tight black muscle shirt tucked into the waistband. His arms were strong and muscled, much like his defined abs visible through his shirt.

            Zhi Zhu changed his balance and reached with the hand below up, grabbing the nylon above him. His legs shifted down and he bent his knees, split his legs, and hooked one around the ribbon, holding it in the crook of his knee while keeping the other gracefully extended. He swung in gentle, slow circles around the nylon while he skillfully let it slip through his hands, bringing him down close enough to the floor to straighten his legs and land.

            He split the band of ribbon and gave it a yank like someone would to unfold a sheet. The ribbons separated more noticeably. Both were thick and strong, but seemed more manageable as two pieces. Zhi Zhu gripped one ribbon in each hand and wound the cords around his wrists, leaving only about two feet extra.

            The man began to run, prancing around the marked-off arena in a wide circle. Emili watched his hands carefully. As he moved, he slowly rotated his wrists so that he was subtly taking up more and more of the slack. Before long, he had enough momentum to pick up his legs and swing out, over the candles, and kept rolling his wrists so that the ribbons took him higher. He seemed to fly, with his knees bent like he was sailing, the remaining ends of the ribbons streaming in his wake.

            Sarah and John were impressed. John, Em was frustrated to note, didn’t seem to be drawing the connection between the amazing acrobat and their no-longer-anonymous assassin.

* * *

 

            Sarah became less fidgety once she had something to do with her hands. She nursed the cup of tea until Emili was certain it was too cool to taste very good. In the meantime, John carefully copied each cipher onto drafting paper; then he wrote them in a different order, because Asian writing generally translated from right to left. Sherlock laid all of the blown-up photos on the floor in an apparently random layout and sat down with his legs crossed, staring at them with seemingly dead eyes. The two men were quiet except for John’s scratching pencil, leaving Sarah sitting at the other side of the table with Emili.

            Emili herself was working on the cipher, too, but while Sherlock looked for patterns, she was translating from Hangzhou to the English numerals. She had her tablet turned on, showing a chart of the Chinese system, and wrote them out in a notebook, blocking off in brackets which numbers were paired together.

            Sarah briefly got up, refilled her cup with fresh tea, and returned a few minutes later, this time shored up to speak. “So, this is what you do?” She asked Emili. “You and John, you… solve puzzles.”

            “Consulting detective.” Sherlock stated, slightly irked that Sarah made it sound like they did online games instead of actual investigative work.

            Emili looked at Sarah and rolled her eyes, gesturing for her not to take Sherlock too seriously. “What usually happens is we pick up on cases the police dismiss, or we’re called when they have something they think we can do faster,” she explained accommodatingly. “There’s an inspector who usually works there – on vacation now, unfortunately – and he tosses us some reports or crime scenes he thinks might have more to them than they appear. The rest of the time, we get our work from independent clients, who approach us like an investigative firm. Sherlock has a website, John has his blog. They get some traffic.” Tactfully, Emili didn’t state which one got more. Sherlock was still prissy about that.

            “John has a blog?” Sarah repeated in surprise.

            Emili nodded. “Yeah, he likes writing. He changes names and some locations to keep privacy, and then he writes about the cases we work on.” She smiled. “ _A Study in Pink_ was the first one, I can send you the link if you like.”

            “Yeah, I think I’ll give it a look.” Sarah said, nodding and sending a fond smile at John. The man was too distracted to notice, but it was cute that she liked him so much. “And your accent. You sound… American?”

            Her work was going slower because she was entertaining Sarah, but she didn’t mind too much. It was less brain-numbing that way, and they weren’t in a hurry to check it against anything at the moment. “Yeah, I was adopted by Sherlock’s parents and moved into the upstairs apartment over the summer.”

            “On your own?”

            “The parents live in the country,” she explained, “But they wanted me to be closer to the resources in the city, so they sent me to live with my brother.” She neglected to mention specifically that Mycroft was the one she was supposed to have stayed with.

            That seemed to answer her questions for a few minutes. Emili figured out the numbers from a few more ciphers and got a couple more pairs down in her notebook before Sarah had thought of another question to quietly ask.

            “What are these squiggles here?” The female doctor leaned over a little and picked up the first photograph in the sequence Emili was working with.

            “It’s part of a cipher,” she murmured back. “Each set of two is one reference. See, these in these photos are one and fifteen. Word one of page fifteen.” She picked up the hand that was holding her thin-tipped pen and gestured around the apartment as a whole. “That’s what all these books are for. Sorry about the clutter,” she noted belatedly.

            Em put her head down to continue while Sarah studied the Polaroid with interest. Sherlock made a slight huffing noise, and when Emili looked up, he was staring homicidally at Sarah. She gave him a long, scolding look that made him put his head back down.

            “Each pair of numbers is a word, yes?” Sarah confirmed. Emili hummed. “So if there was another set of one, fifteen, you’d know what it meant.”

            “We still have to figure out which book was used.”

            Sarah opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. Her frown deepened. “If you don’t know, how’d you translate these?”

            Sherlock, Emili, and John all looked up very swiftly. Sarah hadn’t taken her eyes off of the cipher, turning it at different angles to see if she could make it make more sense to her. While it was held up, Emili caught a slight glimpse of color on the back, which hadn’t been there some time before.

            While Sherlock strode towards the table with energized vigor, Emili took the photo from Sarah gently and turned it over. On the white backing, someone had taken a black pen and written “9 Mil”. That was all there was, and Emili didn’t recognize the handwriting.

            “John, come look at this,” Sherlock urged, taking the photo away from Emili rudely. She glared at him. “Soo Lin, at the museum – she started to translate the code for us. We didn’t see it! Nine mil,” Sherlock read it aloud, taking the photo by its edge and smacking the opposite side against his hand impatiently.

            John sat forward on the edge of his chair. “Does that mean millions?” He questioned.

            “Nine million quid,” Sherlock half-answered, “For what?” He reached for the next photo and flipped it, but it was blank. He growled. “We _need_ to know the end of this sentence.”

            Although Emili agreed wholeheartedly, she wasn’t sure how they were going to do that. Sherlock hopped over a chair to get his long coat.

            “Where are you going?” John asked bemusedly.

            “To the museum!” Sherlock exclaimed, giving John a _don’t be stupid_ stare. “To the restoration room. Oh, we must’ve been staring right at it!”

            “At _what?”_

            “The book!” Emili yelped. “Soo Lin must have had the book or she wouldn’t have been able to translate these!” If the museum staff hadn’t cleared out the room, then maybe it was still where it had been!

            “Whilst we were running around the gallery, she started to translate the code.” Sherlock fastened two of the buttons on his left side and shoved his feet into his shoes. “It must still be on her desk!”

* * *

 

            “Where do you keep the paper plates?” Emili questioned, catching him quickly before he could go.

            “Oh, they’re…” John started to look over and indicate in the kitchen, but when he saw the general mess on half of the table and remembered that he lived with Sherlock, his shoulders fell and he shook his head slightly. “I’ll get them,” he offered instead.

            Emili pursed her lips sympathetically. “I’ll get the door,” she volunteered, trading places and heading out the door.

            She took out some notes from her back pocket and counted them out to see how much she had. It came to a bit over, but it was a good amount for a generous tip, and given how quickly they’d gotten here, they deserved it. The hallway, thanks to the dark rug and dull wallpaper, was dimly lit even on its brightest days, but she was so familiar with it by now that she knew where to put her feet.

            The girl pulled the door open without hesitation, thinking solely about food. On the other side, with his hand up like he was going to knock again, was a man almost a full foot taller than her, wearing all black – even a scarf that covered his mouth – and had no food to speak of.

            Emili didn’t think they could’ve been followed home after the circus, but she remembered suddenly the woman who’d been photographing her leaving the building several days ago. If that woman was associated with the Tong…

            Her heart picked up speed and her first impulse was to yell out to John and slam the door in the man’s face, but if there was any chance of not raising the alarm, she wanted to try it. If Mrs. Hudson heard a raucous and was hurt checking on them, Emili would never forgive herself. If she slammed the door, all it would do was make her look afraid, and give him reason to break in.

            “Hello?” She asked after a moment when he didn’t do anything but stare down at her with big, dark, angry-looking eyes. It took a second, but she recognized them with a jolt – she’d seen them very briefly through the carved mask at the circus.

            _Maybe he didn’t get a very good look at me,_ she prayed silently, although her pink hair was pretty hard to miss.

             “Do you have it?” He demanded roughly.

            “What, the food?” She asked, raising an eyebrow and still playing dumb. “No, that’s… that’s generally supposed to be your job.”

            “Do you have the treasure?!”

            There was no good way to answer that. If she said yes, then he’d storm in; if she said no, he’d storm in, anyway, in case she were lying. If ever Mycroft were going to spy on her, she sincerely hoped he decided to do so about now. There was a CCTV camera over Speedy’s. She thought again of Mrs. Hudson, definitely asleep by now, and of John, upstairs, obliviously setting the table. Did he have his gun? No, Emili didn’t think so, but maybe he could get to his room faster than the warrior could get up the stairs.

            “Treasure?” She repeated, giving him a funny look. “Look, I’m sorry, but you have the wrong address.” She had kept her right hand on the doorknob through the whole exchange, and now she started to push it closed quickly.

            The warrior lunged quickly and slammed his weight into the door. The knob was wrenched out of her hand and she went backwards in a flash of panic. The much bigger man forced his way inside and left the door open behind him, but there was no way she could slip out without being seized.

            She screamed. _“John!”_

            Emili ducked backwards and her heel hit the first step. Thankfully, she was far enough to her right and completely missed the stairwell going down, and she gained a few seconds by stumbling backwards on the steps and falling out of the warrior’s reach. She put her hands on the stairs to shove herself up, but before she could scramble up more than a couple of stairs, the warrior grabbed her and dragged her backwards off of them, crushing her to a wide chest with an arm around her throat so she couldn’t shout or breathe.

* * *

 

            _Sirens._ Scotland Yard had arrived at the scene of the emergency and didn’t turn their damn sirens off. She had dealt with enough at this point, and a headache was extremely unnecessary.

            _Pressure._ Around her shoulders, particularly. A thick, orange blanket draped over her insistently by the paramedic, who checked out her bumped head and said she was okay.

            _Shadows._ Emili kept seeing the shadows, like her eyes were still being tricked by the glowing fires inside the recital hall. In lieu of the fires, they were the lights on top of the two on-scene ambulances and three police cars that remained.

            _Smoky…_ She still thought she could smell smoke in her nose, the result of being held in a musty, unventilated building. Blood lingered in her mouth and left a metallic, cloying taste in her throat.

            Slowly, she turned her head to look up at her brother, who sat beside her in the back of the ambulance, focused down on his cell phone. Emili swallowed hard. “I want to go home.”

            Her plaintive statement made her feel like a child, like maybe she really was as young as Mycroft sometimes treated her. Em… well, she didn’t think she cared. She could have died. She was allowed to want to go home. She didn’t ever want to see this tramway again.

            Ever since the ambulance had arrived, she had felt like she was in a hazy dream. Like when she’d been fourteen and broken her arm and then the nurse gave her a shot of morphine and everything seemed to hurt a lot less, but also everything seemed a lot less personal. Maybe, she realized, that was what shock felt like. She was waking up, albeit slowly, and she didn’t like what was around her.

            _I want to go home._ She used to think it to herself when she missed her family. She wanted her home, her bedroom, her comfortable twin-sized bed with the fish tank gurgling on top of her dresser, and her dad checking on her to make sure she wasn’t reading past her bedtime. Sometimes she’d have to get up and complain that Liza was being too loud just one room over, and she couldn’t sleep.

            _I want to go home._ Now she wanted help up the stairs to her apartment, she wanted for John to tuck her in and tell her to give a call if she needed anything. She looked forward to waking up, somehow knowing there would be a well-meaning cup of earl grey on her bedside stand from John and that, quite possibly, she’d wake up during the night and Sherlock would be playing her favorite sonata on his violin. They weren’t a traditional family, and she wasn’t sure she’d call them her family out loud, but they were kind to her, and they took care of her, the way families were supposed to.

            Emili looked slightly to her right, blinking, and saw Dimmock standing beside the back corner of the ambulance, looking concerned. She wondered how long he’d been there.

            “We’ll just slip off,” Sherlock told him coolly. “No need to mention us in your report.”

            Emili yawned. “Um… he has to mention us on record for us to be paid,” she reminded Sherlock. Her arms were partially covered by the shock blanket. She pulled her forearms across her chest, tightening the blanket around herself for comfort.

            “Money.” Sherlock scoffed dismissively. “Dull.” He picked his hands up and tapped on his phone. “I don’t work for that incentive, Em.”

            “Maybe _you_ don’t,” she replied mildly, blinking slowly. “But I would like to be reimbursed for the life-threatening footwork.”

            Dimmock gave her another nod and briefly assured her that he would make sure they got their consulting fees. Then he offered Emili a hand.

            “I’m sorry this happened,” he told her earnestly, shaking her hand firmly whereas Emili’s grip was loose and uncertain. “An’ I wish you the best of luck healing, Miss Holmes.” Emili nodded, mumbled a thank you, and used her other hand to balance while getting off of the ambulance’s bumper to follow Sherlock. “Mr. Holmes…”

            He seemed unsure what to say. Sherlock didn’t need him to say anything, though (or more accurately, didn’t _want_ him to) and filled in before the inspector kept talking. “I have high hopes for you, Inspector,” he said airily. “A glittering career.”

            “I go where you point me.”

            The corner of Sherlock’s mouth quirked. “Exactly.”

            Sherlock walked noticeably slower than he usually did so that Emili didn’t have to walk very fast to stay just behind him. She covered her arms up with the heavy orange blanket and used it as a protective shield against the wind. John, in the other ambulance, was finishing up and getting a butterfly bandage laid across the cut over his brow. Sherlock paused several yards away where John would be able to see them and rejoin once he was freed.

            “Wait,” she said aloud. “I still have the blanket.”

            “Keep it,” Sherlock said uncaringly.

            “But it’s not mine,” she objected. Despite her words, she held it tighter. She was cold, and the pressure on her arms and shoulders actually felt _good_. She wished she’d had more layers on.

            Sherlock was unusually patient with her. Emili knew he would be back to normal if she said something about it, so she didn’t thank him for his consideration, but she very much appreciated it. She knew her brain was running a little slower now that there wasn’t the threat of death scaring the hell out of her.

            John shook hands with the paramedic and said one more thing. Sherlock put his hand up on Emili’s shoulder and pulled out a fold in the blanket so the hem tumbled almost down to her elbow. “Did they explicitly say to give it back?” He questioned her dubiously.

            She shook her head slowly, then stopped because it was tedious. “It’s kind of implied…”

            “It’s a blanket,” Sherlock stated, arching his eyebrows at her to tell her she was being less than brilliant. “They can get more where that came from.”

            It didn’t take much persuading, thanks to how comfortable it was and how little she wanted to risk getting delayed further by questioning policemen who wanted to hear more of the story’s complex details. Now that there was proof everything was true, they couldn’t wait to eat up the entire case. Emili told one irately to wait and read John’s blog.

            “If you say so,” she said. “My blanket now.”

            “Yes, indeed,” her brother indulgently agreed.

* * *

 

            “Nine million for jade pin. Dragon den, black tramway.” Sherlock put his violin down flat in his lap and drummed his short fingernails on the fingerboard between the strings. “An instruction to all of their London operatives. A message of what they were trying to reclaim.”

            John snorted incredulously. “What, a hairpin? All that – that fuss, it was for a _hairpin?_ ”

            “A hairpin worth nine million pounds,” Sherlock corrected.

            John frowned and put his still-steaming cup of fresh tea onto the coffee table. Then he leaned back again and crossed his arms, nestling his hands into the soft wool sweater. “Why so much?”

            Emili almost felt her eyes light up. “Because it belonged to an Empress,” she answered for him quickly, licking her lips and taking another sip of coffee. “General Shan called it the Empress’ pin.”

* * *

 

            John and Emili did end up taking care of Sebastian on their own. He let them into their office, offered them some drinks again, and made a cheap shot at Sherlock not showing up, assuming that they were just as stumped as he had been.

            The two friends, at that point, shared a long look with each other and reached a serious agreement. Sure, Sherlock was an ass who probably had it coming, but the only ones allowed to tease him were John, Emili, and sometimes Mycroft and/or Lestrade.

            Emili took great joy in cheerfully explaining that they had, in fact, solved it. “Your trespasser was an aerialist who scaled up the side of the building and let himself in through the window.” The look on Sebastian’s face… she wished she’d thought to get her phone out and take a photograph.

            Sebastian had to sit down grudgingly and actually write out the check for another twenty thousand pounds. “He really climbed onto the balcony?” The banker asked, looking up at John as if he expected Emili to be more likely to pull his leg.

            John nodded. “We saw him do it ourselves somewhere else,” he half-lied. They’d seen him prove his abilities as an acrobat in the circus. “Swear on it.”

            Sebastian shook his head, biting the inside of his cheek with a sour expression. He swirled his pen over the check to sign his name. When they split that up between them, she was going to be receiving a nice, hefty sum in her savings account. There was something immensely satisfying about earning her money instead of having it handed to her.

            “He was trained for feats like that. Don’t worry, it’s not something your average guy can do.” She looked over to the left side of the office, where a very similar balcony was just outside a two-panel sliding door. “But, just in case you want to be careful, find a way to secure the balconies.”

            The blogger suggested conversationally, “Nail a plank across the window and all your problems are over,” as he leaned over the desk to take the check, just to drive in how simple and stupid the solution was.

            “Or add locks,” Emili also suggested, blinking at him and masking the impishness she felt. “Whichever.”

            Sebastian gave her a very tight, tense smile that appeared more like a grimace, very annoyed and chagrined that he had just paid thirty thousand, in total, for something that a five-year-old could have suggested.

            John checked the check to make sure that it was all filled out and ready to be deposited. “Thanks,” he cheerily said.

* * *

 

            “Scrambled with bacon,” Emili cheerily reported, prancing around her little kitchen with bare feet. “And toast with jam and peanut butter.” She swiped her spatula under the eggs, cooked in a frying pan with chops of bacon bits, and split them onto two plates. “Last call, Sherlock,” she sang.

            “Last response,” he answered in kind, slightly irritated and voice sharp. “No.” Emili rolled her eyes and put two slices of toast on each plate for herself and John. “Digestion slows me down.”

            “Give it a while and I’m pretty sure starvation will, too,” she muttered.

            Sherlock huffed. “Dull.”

            “… Is what your brain will become if you never feed it.”

            Sherlock drew himself up indignantly, but Emili felt proud of herself for having gotten the last word. She sprinkled some cheese to melt on her still-hot eggs and carried both breakfasts over to the table.

            John rubbed his hands together. “This looks fantastic, Em.” He picked up his fork and added a comment about how he was starving, looked pointedly at Sherlock, and then pretended not to have passively pushed the subject.

            Between the sunlight and the warm glow of the overhead fixture, her apartment was bathed in a soft, welcoming light, creating a perfect atmosphere for a “family” breakfast. Sherlock in his dressing gown and Emili still in her fleece pajamas, John dressed for work, Sherlock reading the paper and the other two eating – they didn’t look normal, but they were the closest Em had to family anymore, and the girl wouldn’t say it out loud but she would never be able to fully express how much they meant to her, especially in moments like this.

            Sherlock turned the page on his newspaper noisily and opened up another fold. The picture of Amanda on the front made Emili actually look at it closer, reading the headline of _‘Who Wants to Be a Million-Hair.’_

            “Now that is just sad,” she remarked. They could have written almost anything, and they chose a bad pun. “They should be ashamed.”

            John glanced up briefly, saw the article, and shook his head in disbelief. “I know,” he commiserated, though it became evident they were appalled by different things. “Over a thousand years old and it’s sitting on her bedside table every night.”

            “I believe she meant the pun, John.” Sherlock’s eyes kept moving while he read the pages facing him. “Van Coon didn’t know why they were chasing him, he just thought it was a trinket.”

            The veteran snorted. “He should’ve just gotten her a lucky cat.”

            All three of them, as if on cue, looked up to Em’s mantelpiece. The lucky cat that she’d bought in Chinatown had found its place on the righthand corner. Its little glass paw waved up and down steadily while the swirling colors inside looked like captured rivulets of wet paint.

            Sherlock’s eyes lingered on the collectible, but Emili got the feeling that his brain was actually somewhere much further away. She spread grape jam on her toast and nibbled distractedly. The Black Lotus were probably not going to come after them again. With Zhi Zhu dead and two of Shan’s henchmen in custody, the Tong’s inner circles were facing a serious blow.

            Emili wished she didn’t have to worry about Shan at all – about the fact that the general knew her address and had candid photographs of her somewhere. The leader had escaped, and although Dimmock put out feelers, nothing came up. The pink-haired girl didn’t really expect anything to.

            John sipped at his tea, looking across the table at his roommate thoughtfully. “You mind, don’t you?”

            “Hm?” Sherlock looked away from the cat and blinked once, almost _like_ a cat. “What?”

            “That Shan got away,” Emili explicated for John, pretty sure they were both thinking the same thing. “You go off into your own little world every time you think about her.” It had happened several times in the last day alone.

            “It’s not enough that we just got her two henchmen?” John questioned, trying to helpfully remind his friend of the upside.

            It was definitely a good thing that two of them had been apprehended, but the Tong was a large syndicate. Two was barely a dent. Emili just hoped that it was enough to send a message.

            Sherlock shook his head. They had cleared a major threat in London, but they had also exposed a much larger, broader issue that they didn’t have the resources to tackle. “It must be a vast network, John, with thousands of operatives. We’ve barely scratched at the surface.”

            “You cracked the code, though,” John optimistically reminded. He gave Emili a little encouraging gesture, seeing her realistically withdrawn expression. “Maybe Dimmock can track down all of them now that he knows it. What was the book, by the way?”

            “ _London A to Z_ ,” Sherlock replied, reading the paper again. He set it out on the table and smoothed the creases with his hands. “A book is a gateway to other worlds, John, and there are millions of worlds they have to choose from.”

            “What does that even _mean?”_ John exasperatedly asked of Emili.

            “It means Shan can tell the others we know how they communicate,” she told the doctor, sighing softly. “They’ve probably already got a new system, or a new book, at the very least.”

            Emili’s appetite had waned considerably, but she knew it was more to do with the mood than with actual hunger and talked herself into finishing her second piece of toast. John emptied his plate first and took it to the sink. He gave it a quick wash, loaded it into the dishwasher for her, and walked with his tea mug towards the nice windows, where he pulled back a curtain to watch.

            Sherlock kept reading. Emili spared a look at her phone to make sure that John wasn’t going to be late getting to work. After another minute or two, Emili finished her own breakfast and did the same as John regarding her dishes.

            “Em,” the blond man said suddenly, sounding surprised. “Come look.”

            The outside street was even brighter than she had expected it to be. A figure in baggy jeans and a black and red hoodie strutted up to a small electronic post on the street which issued parking permits.

            Soon enough, Emili saw why it was important to John. It was Raz, Emili recognized in surprise, the graffiti artist who’d gotten them in trouble already. As they watched, he ripped open a compartment of his backpack and took out a spray can of paint. He gave it a good shake, looked over his shoulder right as a patrolling cop car passed by, and started to spray the nametag that had been on the piece John and Emili were arrested for.

            He did it quickly without any art surrounding it, and he dropped his can and took off running with his backpack as soon as the police got what he was doing and turned on their flashing blue siren. Raz’s signature didn’t have any of his other trademarks of street art, but then, Emili suspected as he fled the police, making the art wasn’t actually the point this time.

            “Maybe you can wipe that ASBO,” Emili suggested lightly as John let the curtains fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Please review! If this is well-received, then I will continue working on the larger story to publish as a whole.


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